Risks and Opportunities for 2017

Just a few days into 2017 and we can already say with a great degree of confidence that 2017 will be a historical year. Furthermore, I submit that 2017 will be the “Year of Trump” because one of roughly three things will happen: either Trump will fully deliver on his threats and promises, or Trump deliver on some, but far from all, his threats and promises or, finally, Trump will be neutralized by the Neocon-run Congress, media, intelligence community. He might even be impeached or murdered. Of course, there is an infinity of sub-possibilities here, but for the purpose of this discussion I will call the first option “Trump heavy”, the second one “Trump light” and the third one “Trump down”. Before discussing the possible implications of these three main options, we need to at least set the stage with a reminder of what kind of situation President Trump will be walking into. I discussed some of them in my previous analysis entitled “2016: the year of Russia’s triumph” and will only mention some of the key outcomes of the past year in this discussion. They are:

The USA has lost the war against Syria. I chose my words carefully here: what initially had many aspects of a civil war almost immediately turned into a war of aggression by a very large coalition of countries under the leadership of the United State. From the creation of the “Friends of Syria”, to covert support of the various terrorist organizations, to the attempts at isolating the Syrian government, the United States rapidly took control of the “war against Assad” and they now “own” that defeat. Now it is Russia which is in full control of the future of Syria. First, the Russians tried to work with the USA, but it soon became impossible, and the Russians concluded in utter disgust that the US foreign policy was run not from the White House or Foggy Bottom, but from the Pentagon. The Pentagon, however, completely and abjectly failed to achieve anything in Syria and the Russians seem to have come to the amazing conclusion that they can simply ignore the USA from now on. Instead they turned to the Turks and the Iranians to stop the war. This is an absolutely amazing development: for the first time since WWII the USA have become irrelevant to the outcome of a conflict which they greatly contributed to create and perpetuate: having concluded that the Americans are “non-agreement capable” (недоговороспособны) the Russians won’t even try to oppose US efforts, they will simply ignore them. I believe that the case of Syria will be the first and most dramatic but that in the future the same will happen elsewhere, especially in Asia. That is a situation which no American had to face and it is very hard to predict how Trump will adapt to this completely new situation. I am cautiously optimistic that, as a good businessman, Trump will do the right thing and accept reality for what it is a focus his efforts and resources on a few critical issues/regions rather than further pursuing the Neocon’s pipe dream of worldwide “full-spectrum dominance”. But more about that later.

Europe is in a state of total chaos. As I have written it many times, instead of the Ukraine becoming like Europe, it is Europe which became like the Ukraine: simply unsustainable and doomed to failure. The European crisis is a massive and multi-layered one. It is, of course, an economic crisis, but that crisis is made worse by a political one, which itself is compounded by a profound social crisis and, as a result, the entire EU system and the elites which used to run it are now facing a fundamental crisis of legitimacy. As for the European politicians, they are far more busy denying the existence of the crisis rather than dealing with it. The United States which for decades carefully fostered and nurtured an entire generation of spineless, narrow-minded, neutered and infinitely subservient European “leaders” is now facing the unpleasant outcome that these European politicians are as clueless as blind puppies and that they simply have no policy and no vision whatsoever as to what to do next: they are all locked into a short term survival mode characterized by a quasi total tunnel vision which makes them oblivious to the environment they are operating in. A continent which produced the likes of Thatcher, de Gaulle or Schmidt now produces vapid non-entities like Hollande or Cameron. Trump will thus inherit a de-facto colony completely unable to manage itself. And, just to make things worse, while that colony’s comprador “elites” has no vision and no policy, at the same time it is deeply hostile to Donald Trump and in full support of his Neocon enemies. Again, this is a situation which no American President has ever faced.

Russia is now the most powerful country on the planet. I know, I know, the Russian economy is relatively small, Russia has plenty of problems and just a year ago Obama dismissed Russia as a “regional power” while McCain referred to her as a “gas station masquerading as a country”. What can I say? – these two imbeciles were simply wrong and there is a good reason, plenty in fact, why Forbes has declared Putin the most powerful man on earth for four consecutive years. And it’s not just because the Russian armed forces are probably the most powerful and capable ones on earth (albeit not the largest ones) or because Russia has successfully defeated the USA in Syria and, really, the rest of the Middle-East. No, Russia is the most powerful country on earth because of two things: Russia openly rejects and denounces the worldwide political, economic and ideological system the USA has imposed upon our planet since WWII and because Vladimir Putin enjoys the rock-solid support of about 80%+ of the Russian population. The biggest strength of Russia in 2017 is a moral and a political one, it is the strength of a civilization which refuses to play by the rules which the West has successfully imposed on the rest of mankind. And now that Russia has successfully “pushed back” others will inevitably follow (again, especially in Asia). This is also a completely new situation for the next American President who will have to operate in a world where defying Uncle Sam is not only not a death sentence any more, but might even be seen as rather trendy.

China is now locked into a strategic alliance with Russia which is something unique in world history. Unlike past alliances which could be broken or withdrawn from, what Putin and Xi did is to turn their countries into symbionts: Russia basically depends on China for many goods and services while China depends on Russia for energy, defense, aerospace and high-tech (for those interested in this topic I would recommend the excellent White Paper Larchmonter445 wrote for the Saker blog on this topic: The Russia-China Double Helix). As a result, Russia and China today are like a type of “Siamese twins” which have separate heads (political independence and their own governments) but which share a number of organs vital for both heads. This means that even if Russia/China wanted to “dump China/Russia” in exchange for a rapprochement with the USA she could not do that. To my knowledge nothing similar has ever happened before. Never have two (ex-) Empires decided to remain separate but fully integrated into each other. No grand charter, no big alliance, no solemn treaty was ever signed to make this happens, only huge number of (comparatively) small(er) contracts and agreements. And yet they have quietly achieved something absolutely unique in history. What this means for the USA is that they cannot count on their favorite divide et impera strategy to try to rule the planet because that strategy simply cannot work any longer: even if the Russian and Chinese leaders got themselves into a heated dispute they could not undo what has now been done. The integrationist momentum between China and Russia could probably only be stopped by a war, and that is simply not happening. Right now Trump is making a lot of provocative gestures towards China, possibly in the hope that if the USA normalizes relations with Russia China would find itself isolated. But isolating China is just as impossible as isolating Russia, and provoking China is simply a non-starter. For the first time since WWII the next American President will have to come to terms that in the Russia-China-USA triangle it is the USA which is the weakest and most vulnerable party.

Iran is too powerful to be bullied or submitted. It is true that Iran is far weaker than Russia or China and that Iran is not a major international player. However, I would argue that Iran is a formidable regional superpower which can probably single-handedly take on any combination of regional countries and prevail against them, even if at a great cost. Just like Russia, Iran is protected by a perfect combination of geography and advanced armed forces. Oh sure, Iranian capabilities are not quite on par with US or Russian ones, but they powerful enough to make Iran an extremely tough and dangerous target to attack. Many years ago, in distant 2007, I wrote an article entitled “Iran’s asymmetrical response options” which is now clearly dated but primarily in the sense that since 2007 Iran has become even more dangerous to attack, be it by the USA, Israel or a combo of both. Would Russia and/or China go to war with the USA in case of a US/Israeli attack on Iran? No. But there would be very severe political consequences to pay for the USA: a guaranteed veto in the UNSC (even if US forces are targeted in the KSA or in the Strait of Hormuz), political, economic and possibly military support for Iran, intelligence support for Iranian operations not only in Iran, but also in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, an upgrade of the currently semi-official relations with Hezbollah and support for the Lebanese Resistance. But the main “weapon” used against the USA would be informational – any attack will be vehemently opposed by the Russian media and the western blogosphere sympathetic to Russia: this is exactly the scenario which the US and NATO fear so much: lead by RT and Sputnik, a US-bashing campaign in the social media. This is a new reality for 2017: we are not used to the notion that Russia also has any type of “soft power”, in this case political soft power, but the fact is that these Russian capabilities are both real and formidable and this is why the Neocons blame both the Brexit and the victory of Trump in the USA on the “Kremlin propaganda machine”. While there is no such “machine”, there is an active blogosphere and non-US media space out there on the Internet which seems to be powerful enough to at least encourage a type of “rebellion of the serfs” of the Neocon leaders of the Empire. The bottom line is this: the USA has lost its informational monopoly on the planet and the next US President will have to compete, really compete, to convince and rally to his views and agenda.

How will Trump deal with these fundamentally new challenges?

If it is “Trump down” then we will have something very similar to what we had with Obama: a lot of broken promises and lost hopes. In practical term, the USA will then return to what I would call the “consensus policies of the AngloZionist Empire”, which is what we have had since at least Bill Clinton and which every four years becomes “same old, same old, only worse”. If Trump is impeached or murdered we could witness an internal explosion of unrest inside the USA which would absorb most of the time and energy of those who tried to removed him. If Trump proves to be all talk and no action, we will go right back to the situation with Obama: a weak Presidency resulting in various agencies “doing their own thing” without bothering to check what everybody else is doing. This would be a disaster both inside and outside the USA. The most likely outcome would be a rather brutal, sudden and irreversible crash of the AngloZionist Empire. Should a “President Pence” ever happen the risks of thermonuclear war would immensely soar right back up to what they were before the election. That is by far the worst option for everybody.

“Trump light” is probably the most likely option to actually happen. Make no mistake, even though I call it “Trump light”, big things could still happen in this case. First and foremost, the US and Russia could decide to deal with each other on the basis of self-interest, common sense, realism and mutual respect. Just that could be quite revolutionary and a radical departure from the anti-Russian policies of the USA since Bill Clinton (and, really, since the end of WWII). However, the collaboration between Russia and the USA would not be global, but rather limited to some specific issues. For example, the USA and Russia could agree on joint operations against Daesh in Syria, but the US would not put a stop to the current US/NATO policy of escalation and confrontation against Russia in Europe. Likewise, the Neocon run Congress would prevent any real US-Russian collaboration on the issue of the Ukraine. This option would be far less than what some hardcore Trump supporters are hoping for, but still something infinitely better than Hillary in the White House.

While probably less likely, it is “Trump heavy” which could really usher in a fundamentally new era in international relations. In this case, Russia and the USA would hammer out a number of far reaching deals in which they would jointly take action to solve key issues. The theoretical possibilities are nothing short of amazing.

First and foremost, the USA and Russia could completely overhaul the European security by reviving and modernizing the cornerstone of European security: the Conventional Forces Europe (CFE) treaty. The US and Russia could negotiate a new CFE-III treaty and then use it as a basis to settle all the outstanding security issues in Europe thereby making a war in Europe de-facto impossible. Such a deal would be immensely beneficial to the entire continent and it would mark the beginning of a completely new era for Europe. The only real losers would be the western MIC and a few rabid and otherwise useless states (Latvia, Poland, etc.) whose only valuable export commodity is russophobic paranoia. However, as in every case when war, potential or actual, is replaced by peace, the vast majority of the people of Europe would benefit from such a deal. There would be some tough and delicate negotiations needed to finalize all the details, but I am comfortable that if Russia is given some real, verifiable security guarantees the Kremlin would order a stand-down of Russian forces west of the Urals.

Second, the USA and Russia could jointly take action to stop the civil war in the Ukraine, turn the Ukraine into a federal state with a large autonomy granted to all the regions of the Ukraine (not just the Donbass) and declare that a non-aligned and neutral Ukraine will be the cornerstone of the new European security system. If Russia and the USA agree on that, there is nothing the Ukie Nazis or the European could do to prevent it. Frankly, just as irresponsible and stupid teenagers don’t get to participate in adult decisions, the EU and the junta in Kiev should be told that they are now done creating a disaster and that adults have had to step in to stop the nightmare from getting even worse. I bet you that such an approach would get the support of many, if not most, Ukrainians who are now truly fed up with what is going on. Most Europeans (except the political elites, of course) and most Russians would welcome the end of the Ukrainian clusterf*ck (sorry, but that is an accurate descriptor).

The USA has lost a lot of relevance in the Middle-East. Still, they have enough power to actually make a useful contribution to the destruction of Daesh, especially in Iraq. While Russia, Iran and Turkey probably can impose some type of settlement of the war against Syria, having the American support, even if just a limited one, could be immensely useful. CENTCOM is still very powerful and to have a joint Russian-US campaign to crush Daesh could be most beneficial to the entire region. Having the Russians and the Americans finally intelligently and sincerely collaborate with each other would be a very new and fascinating thing to watch and I am pretty sure that the servicemen on both side would very much welcome this opportunity. The Middle-East does not have to be a zero-sum game, but the next US President will have to understand that the US are now a junior partner of a much bigger coalition. That is the price you pay for having an idiot in the White House for eight years.

Needless to say, if the Americans and the Russians successfully work with each other in Europe, the Ukraine and the Middle-East this would mark a dramatic departure from the “tepid war” which took place between Russia and the USA during the disastrous Obama Presidency.

Alas, there is the rather distressing issue of Trump’s catering to the US Israel Lobby and his stupid and delusional anti-Iranian rhetoric. If Trump keeps up with this nonsense once in the White House he will simply lock himself out from any real deal in the Middle-East. Furthermore, knowing the rabid russophobia of the Neocons, if Trump bows to their demands on Iran, he will probably also have to severely curtail the scope of US-Russian collaboration in Europe, the Ukraine and elsewhere. The same goes for Trump constant China-bashing and provoking: if Trump really and sincerely believes that the USA is in a position to bully China then he is headed for some very painful disillusionments. The time when the USA could bully or intimidate China has long past and all Trump would do is fail against China in the same way Obama failed against Russia.

This, in my opinion, is THE key question of the Trump Presidency: will the USA under Trump accept that the US world hegemony is over once and for all and that from now on the USA will be just one major player amongst other major players? Yes, America, the country, not the Empire, *can* be made “great again” but only if by giving up on the Empire and accepting to become a “regular”, albeit still major, country.

If the US establishment continues to operate on the assumption that “we’re number one”, “the US military is the most powerful in world history” or that the “USA is the indispensable nation” which has to “lead the world” then the Trump Presidency will end up in disaster. Messianic and imperialist ideas have always lead their carriers to catastrophic failure and the USA is no exception. For one thing, the messianic and imperialist mindset is always profoundly delusional as it always favors ideology over reality. And, as the expression goes, if your head is in the sad, your ass is in the air. One of the biggest advantages which Russia and China have over the United States is that they fully realize that they are in many ways weaker than the USA. And yet, paradoxically, that awareness is what makes them stronger at the end of the day.

It should therefore become a top priority of President Trump to ditch the infinitely arrogant attitude so typical of the Neocons and their Trotskyite forefathers (both physical and ideological) and replace it with an acute awareness for the need to only engage in policies commensurate with the actual capabilities of the USA. Fact-based realist politics have to replace the current imperial hubris.

Likewise, it should also become a top priority of President Trump to purge the US elites form the toxic cabal which has taken it over: just like the main threat to President Putin is the Russian 5th column, I strongly believe that the biggest threat to President Trump will be the Neocon-controlled US 5th column in the USA, especially in Congress, the media, Hollywood and the intelligence community. The Neocons will never gracefully give up or otherwise accept that the American people have shown them to the door. Instead, they will do what they have always done: engage in a vicious hate campaign against Trump himself and against those who dared vote for him. Right now, Trump is clearly trying to appease them by throwing them a bone here and there (Pence, Priebus, Friedman, Iran bashing, etc.) which, I suppose, is fair enough. But if he continues to zig-zag like that once in the White House then he doesn’t stand a chance against them.

Michael Moore has just called for “100 days of resistance” following the Trump inauguration. While Moore himself is more of a (very talented) clown, that kind of initiative can end up becoming trendy, especially amongst the thoroughly zombified US Millennials and the butt hurt pseudo “liberals” who simply cannot and will not accept that Hillary has lost. We should never underestimate the capabilities of the Soros agents to start a color revolution inside the USA.

The US ‘deep state’ is also a powerful and immensely dangerous enemy whose options to oppose a “Trump Heavy” outcome include not only murdering Trump himself, but also to create another 9/11 false flag inside the USA, possibly one involving nuclear materials, and use it as a pretext to impose some kind of state of emergency.

Finally, and as always, there are the banks (in a general sense, including insurances, investment funds, etc, – all the financiers basically) who will fight a re-sovereignization of the United States with everything they got. Normally, I use the expression “re-sovereignization” to describe what Vladimir Putin has tried to do in Russia since 2000: the process of wrestling the real power from a small trans-national elite, return it to the people of Russia and making Russia a truly independent and sovereign country. The same concept, however, also applies to the USA whose people have clearly become the hostages and the serfs of a small elite, actually less than 1%, which is in full control of the real centers of power. A lot of that control, most of it really, is concentrated in various financial institutions which really control all the branches of government in the USA. Some call them “Corporate USA”, or “USA, Inc,” but really we are dealing with financiers and not with corporations who actually make a living by offering goods and services. The real levels of corruption in the USA and probably higher than anywhere on the planet simply because of the immense sums of money involved. The corrupt parasites (literally) who run this money-making machine will do everything in their power to prevent a return to power of the American people and they will never allow “one man – one vote” to replace the current “one dollar – one vote”.

It is ironic, of course, that Trump himself, and his entire entourage, come from these financial elites. But it would be a mistake to simply assume that if a person comes from one specific milieu he will always like and support it. Che Guevara was a medical doctor from a fairly well-off family of Argentinian bourgeois. Oh, I am not comparing Trump to the Che! I am just saying that the theory of class consciousness sometimes has interesting exceptions. At the very least, Trump knows these people very well and he might be the ideal man to break their current monopoly on power.

Conclusion:

Making predictions for a year like 2017 when most outcomes depend on what a single person might or might not do is rather futile. At best, this is an exercise is simple statistical luck. Those who will make correct predictions will, of course, look good and those who predictions will not materialize will look bad. But, in reality, they are all currently equally clueless. This is why I chose to speak of risks and opportunities and to look at at least three rough “Trump variants”. Still, there are processes in which Trump and the USA are crucial or, at least, central, but there are others where they matter a whole lot less. So, in conclusion, I will hazard of few guesses and submit them to you with all the imaginable caveats about probably being wrong. This being said, here we go.

First, I think that there is a good chance that Russia, Iran and Turkey will succeed in stopping the war against Syria. The country will remain unitary, but with pretty clear zones of influence and with a government which will include Assad, but also representatives of the opposition. Syria is far too big and too diverse to ever enjoy the type of peace Chechnia enjoys today, so at best we can hope for the kind of semi-peace which Dagestan has endured for the past years. It won’t be perfect, not by a long shot, but the absolute horror will stop.

Second, I think that Poroshenko will lose power this year. The Nazi-occupied Ukraine has survived on a mix of momentum (there was still a lot of wealth left from the Soviet era) and western assistance. Both are now coming to a full halt. Furthermore, there are increasing signs that the Ukrainian armed forces are now so busy simply surviving in the field that they have become basically incapable of meaningful combat operations. Should some particularly deluded nationalist volunteer battalion or political leader order an attack on Novorussia the Ukrainians are likely to suffer a major defeat followed by a liberation of the currently Nazi-occupied territories of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. And this time around, if that happens, the Novorussian will have the means to liberate Mariupol and hold on to it without being cut-off from the Donbass by a Ukrainian flanking counter-attack. Finally, if Poroshenko is replaced by even more lunatic elements Russia might decide to recognize the independence of the Lugansk and Donetsk Republics which, in turn, would inevitably result in a referendum in these republics to join Russia. EU politicians will have a fit, Poland and Estonia will declare a Russian invasion imminent, but Russia will simply ignore them all. As for Trump, he is most unlikely to do much about this either, especially considering that the Ukie Nazis were 100% behind Hillary and dismissed him as a total joke. The last and only chance the “Independent Banderastan” has to avoid this outcome is to finally fully and totally implement the Minsk-2 Agreement, to basically self-dissolve. Will the crazies in Kiev have the wisdom to understand that? I very much doubt it. But who knows, maybe God will take pity on the people of the Ukraine and give them the strength to get rid of the Banderite rot which has brought so much misery upon them.

That leaves me with one area of great concern to me: Latin America.

This has not often been noticed, by Latin American is the one realm of US foreign policy where Obama has been rather successful, at least if you support the subjugation of Latin American by the USA: Castro is gone, Chavez is gone, possibly murdered, Christina Kirchner is gone, President Dilma Rousseff has been overthrown in a parliamentary coup and it appears that the same fate will now befall Nicholas Maduro. Very significantly, Cuba has agreed to a deal which will give the USA a great deal more leverage over the future of the island-state. True, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa and Daniel Ortega are still in power, but the undeniable fact that the Latin American political heavyweights have fallen. Will Trump change the US policy towards Latin America? I very much doubt that, if only because “if it ain’t broke – don’t fix it”. And from an US imperialist point of view, the current policy ain’t broke at all, it is rather a success. I simply see no reason why Trump would decide to allow Latin American to be free and sovereign thereby reversing the almost 200 year old Monroe Doctrine. Freedom for Latin America will come at the end of a long struggle no matter who is in the White House.

So no, life in 2017 will be a far cry from life in a perfect world, but there is a better than average chance that 2017 might see some very significant and much needed improvement over the frankly disastrous past years. There is still hope that Trump might deliver and if he does, he might become on of the best US Presidents in many, many years. Whether Trump delivers or not, the world will further move away from unipolarity to multipolarity and that is an immensely desirable evolution. All in all, and for the first time in decades, I feel rather optimistic. This is such a weird and unnatural feeling for me that I almost feel guilty about it. But sometimes guilty enjoyment is also great fun!

The Saker

The Essential Saker II: Civilizational Choices and Geopolitics / The Russian challenge to the hegemony of the AngloZionist Empire

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180 Comments

Good counter-propaganda has made it look like the geopolitical points of the article are bigger than they are:
that the US lost in Syria
that Russia is super powerful
that Iran is bold and free
that Europe is failing from its own ineptitude
and the China Russia alliance is convenient and healthy.

In fact, looking at the whole picture, the USA beat the planet up very successfully and comes out the winner 10 to 1 between 2000 and 2016.

The issue at stake is that the USA (and to a lesser extent UK, EU, Aus, Jap, Can) survives only by being able to force the planet to trade in dollars, which allows it to issue debt risk free and skim 60+% of world trade through its correspondent and Swift banking system. In 2008 nations that must exchange their real cash and services for that stinking pile of paper started to move away from the dollar. This is what the BRICS etc are about. The USA had to destroy this system rising against it, or die.

To that end it endeavored to tear up the competition and remain with the dollar on top. In the 15 years since 9/11 the USA has successfully:

1.destroyed the oil producers that wanted to trade oil in other than the dollar by bombing them into the stone age (Iraq Libya)
2. torn the heart out of the BRICS
3. taken over the governments of S America.
4. Crushed commodities and sunk South africa
5. Crushed emerging economies by ever strengthening the dollar as it did before in the late 90s
6. Spread military bases into 46 of 52 African nations.
7. Ringed the S periphery of Russia and China with long range missiles and drones.
8. Broken the growing relationship between Eu and Russia by a coup in Ukraine, placing mass military hardware into Eu, continually removing Eu strength with financial and political subterfuge, including Brexit, flooded it with US sponsored migrants
9. extended NATO right up to the Russian border, including Afghanistan and Kazakhstan
10. Made merry hell with Russian economic cooperation with the EU
11. Smashed Syria to pieces and illegally built more military bases inside the country than Russia has, all on oil fields
12. etc etc etc.

All of this during the US’s ‘pivot to Russia’. It’s successes were huge, against which the winning of Allepo, Crimea and Donbas by Russia were bold, necessary but minor rear-guard actions that also gave live training to Russian troops and weapons testing.

What does 2017 bring? The US have achieved nearly everything they wanted from the pivot to Russia. Trumps ‘china bashing’ will do the same: while the world concentrates on a minor spat between China and some regional territory (what do you think the talk of Taiwan, S Korea, etc is about?), instigated and funded by the US, behind the scenes they will rip through the rest of Asia buying up and tearing governments to pieces and planting their military everywhere. And then the scene will be set for the big war.

Why war? Because interest bearing debt requires an ever-expanding market in order for interest on past debt to be paid. If it fails to aggressively expand into virgin markets and populations (which Ru and China clearly intend to stop), it needs the fog of war to cover the quiet and massive deleveraging of banks and deflation of bubbles. That is why debt is not inherently, but always leads to evil.

Trump is no friend of anyone. He has just elbowed his family onto the top table. The war he is having with the media is just about getting it in line with his message and loosing off its old alliances

You will see China and Russia back to back against the militarized vampire that is dollar debt.
They will continue to prepare for war.
They will continue to attempt to extinguish the coming fire by trying to shove the world institutions towards a new international currency basket (the SDR).
The issuers of debt will continue winning until the game is complete or they are all dead.

The US plan that the next 2-5 years will be as vicious in the Asia area. That is their view 2017 et seq.

BUT, as Thomas Carlyle wrote in 1893 in ‘French Revolution’

“Hope ushers in revolution – as earthquakes are proceeded by bright weather”. And Russia has given decent people hope, especially in Aleppo.

I agree with proper gander. The stakes are global control and the globalist NWO psychpaths are “all-in” and cannot afford to fold. They don’t give a damn what the rational self-interest of the USA is. They are only concerned with their own control and their deep, deep, visceral spiritual fear of losing that control.

Quite possibly, unless they can buy time to regroup by throwing a few “babies to the wolves” (the Clintons, Obama, Nutttyahoo and a few other servants of satan) in order to buy time till the heat dies down, revamp their strategy that has run into serious roadblocks this past year, especially, they will pull out all stops and deploy asssassinations and even nuclear explosion events long before they will fold or accept any sort of permanent loss. Because those de-escalations mean potentially hundreds of their most powerful minions (the Royal families of Europe, The Bush Dynasty, Soros, etc, etc being exposed, prosecuted, bankrupted, taken down. So I don’t expect any acceptance of defeat from them. They may be able to afford sacrificing a few “Chuckies” like Charles Shumer and Prince Charles but they cannot afford to let an aroused humanity take all of their protectors down and get to the witches behind all those minions, and be “burnt” by an awakened humanity with pitch forks, which they absolutely believe that they own!

However, I also like Saker’s perspective, in the sense that if the consciousness momentum I have expressed by the image of the 2016 US election “surprise” being about 1/4 of adult Americans having “one eye about 10% open” does not rest and retreat, but results in a further awakening, then and only then can the elites of a New World Dis-Order spiritual garbage can be stymied and their doomsday options be pried from their cold dead fingers.

proper gander and Saker both lay out the strategic array of economic, political, military etc forces in much better detail than I could ever hope to do. And these are the pieces on the chess board. But the masters are not pieces on the chess board. They are above it. And there are not two or three of them. There are many, many of them. But they aggregate in opposing qualities or characteristics of consciousness expressed in the actions of the major and minor pieces and those persons such as Putin, Trump, and Xi who can move those pieces, within numerous constraints. And that’s where “the rubber meets the road”, IMHO. The most significant constraints are the lack of consciousness among the billions of pawns, the world’s population of human beings AND whether that consciousness falls deeper into slumber or can be awakened further, especially here in the USA.

Because if the momentum of the US “Deplorables” is not stopped, and some combination of conscious masters on this planet is able to further arouse and activate their resistance to Empire and to evil, then, and only then, IMO, will evil go down and stay down, for centuries to come, without first holding a nuclear gun to humanity’s head.

The present century may be a golden one, or humanity’s last one. I not only expect a harrowing, exciting, rewarding, beautiful, horrendous battle ahead, for the rest of my life, but I am also telling my sons to expect such excitement and high stakes for the rest of their lives, extending into AD 2100 and possibly beyond.

Despair of, insult, cajole and shake up the consciousness of the Deplorables and their stupid, ignorant wrong opinions. But whatever happens with Trump, never ignore them. The aggregate human consciousness, or lack thereof is where this will be decided. And for better or for worse, what the 2016 election did show, is that the greatest “bang for the buck” in terms of potentially tilting the world strategic situation into more favorable territory, just might be “right here in the USA”.

I know from past articles that Saker acknowledges that Spirit trumps all other factors, and expect that the “Deplorables” consciousness/unconsciousness flank will not be neglected here by either him or astute hard-nosed realist commentors such as proper gander in this historically pivotal 2017.

Trump got in because of the undercurrents of the masses, and they are still swirling — and turbulent, chaotic, with pressure still building. Include the second tier politicians and infrrastructure, people, business, in the US and EU especially, and splits in academia, the media, intelligence, military, and the 1% (and butterflies in Brazil). Where, when, and how all this converges, and hits the fan, could be very interesting indeed.

First good comment, blue, the other comments (unlike Saker’s article) are rather naive. Saker understandably has to be conservative in what he states, but when was the last time a prominent (Western) politician handled these Nazi (Trotskyite Bolshevik) rats (CNN) like this? See Inessa Sinchougova’s latest vid: https://youtu.be/EgkHo3cqdUE

Rogozin maybe. The Nazi establishment is finished, it is inevitable. Apart from Putin, Trump already deserves credit for that.

Which part of the composite beast bothers you most? In the age of terms like ‘fake news’ and ‘alt-right’ and ‘neo-cons’, all of which just mean ‘lies’, ‘people I do not like’ and ‘zionists’ respectively, why pick on the relatively innocent term ‘Nazi-Bolshevik-Trotskyite’?
I understand the Nazi part to mean ‘National Socialist (of Zionism/Israel)’.
The term works quite well then. And why did you ignore the brackets? They make it even clearer.

Saker also has a good measure of caution, but also has some optimism pg critiques as “naïve”.

My point is the main strategic factor both understandably do not discuss as a main, conscious factor is the consciousness of the US population. Understandably so, because for the most part, that consciousness, particularly in recent decades has been unconscious! But that’s where victory or defeat for humanity ultimately resides. Not just in the US, of course, but in the US more than most places. And there is some motion, isn’t there???

A sister emailed everyone in the family this buzzfeed scandal. Another sister responded:

“Don’t know this site or the author’s bias ( “Deep State” reference clearly indicates an ideological bias) but I basically agree that the hysteria of the media, and the left in general has gone from unseemly to dangerously abandoning any principles they may have had.”

I just answered her and everyone (4 people) :

““Deep State” exists and has existed not just in the USA but in many areas of the world for millennia.

It is just occulted, hidden to the majority of the population, by design.

In earlier times this was mainly accomplished through the elites’ manipulation of the masses through religion (right brain imbalance) . In modern times, through Government. (Gubernare = Control….. Ment = mind) ie left brain imbalance.

That’s what Wizard of Oz is about. Wicked Witch of the East (Old World) goes down, crushed by Dorothy’s house descending from the Kansas tornado.

Wicked Witch of the West (Left brain imbalance, government….. needs to capture and suppress Will, Love, Consciousness (Toto, the most conscious being in the story, film…..Baum had a sense of humor…..) to maintain CONTROL. Fear and Control, Fear and Control. The enemies of consciousness.

Until people realize they have been under mind control, and begin to systematically dismantle it, by being relentlessly determined to pursue truth, no matter how painful or inconvenient or depressing to their ego-attached former opinions, they will mostly remain under mind control. Period. THE END.

Before you tire of the whole challenge realize that the deployers of mind control hate truth, hate natural law itself, hate anything that restricts their will to dominate and control, and came damned close to virtually assuring WW III within a couple of years in rigging the 2016 election for Hitlery. The (not even semi-conscious…see my One Eye opening estimate below) revolt against their mind control just overwhelmed them. Barely. And comprehending Russia, historically is key to comprehending what all of this is about. Napoleon. Hitler. A “Deep State” was behind those operations as well.

Also realize that their control is slipping even with ¼ of the American voting age population opening one eye 1/10 of the way.”

Rah, rah helps in rallies, I agree, Ann. I was just trying to make a deeper, more long lasting point, and if you read it again, you may see that I agree more with Saker than gander. If, if, if that eye of public consciousness opens more, instead of being slammed shut by the Deep State.

They (The Deep State)are trying desperately to do that by burning the Scarecrow. Time to put out the fire with a bucket of water that saves the Scarecrow (brainless public) and melts the Wicked Witch of the West. (Deep State).

I think they have already realized – that is really the point of the election result plus the reactions of people to the ‘offerings’ anti-Trump. I didn’t vote for him, and I am appalled – this sort of demonization of Trump and continuing attack upon him in the media and by various persons of ‘note’ goes against every supposition of respect for government and orderly transition that even those who voted for Hillary Clinton must have taught their children to be the American way.

I mean, even if one had thought ill of Trump as the ‘greater evil’ that concept fades before an actual usurpation of power which these machinations and slurs and threats represent. It is worse to disrespect the structure of government than it is to have a leader you dislike deposed by illegitimate means.

And even those pursuing this course have to realize the dangerous game they are playing. I don’t see them rousing very many to their ranks at all. And I pray that they won’t because however Trump governs, he must be allowed to do so. Otherwise, I think there will be chaos in this country, inevitable chaos.

All Empires have always been very good at one thing – protecting it’s global interests, while always failing at the other end – keeping it’s local economy going. The breaking point comes when “The Empire” collapses from within rendering all it’s global assets worthless.. happened to Rome, Spain, Portugal, England and all others..

Trump for all the praise he gets might actually succeed at keeping the Empire going for another 2-3 generations with his “America first” policy of bringing back jobs and production state-side. With Hilary the Empire would have probably had it’s last “hurrraaa” in the next 4-8 years but Trump might actually ensure it’s survival for much longer. That’s why he is a blessing and a curse in one.

But no matter what Trump does he can’t have it both ways it’s either the local economy or the global empire.. he has to choose.

Well, I wouldn’t really call USA an empire. To be an empire you really would need to occupy territories of numerous different peoples and races and extract resources and labor from them, while there are a few different peoples and races inside the territories of USA, these are mostly immigrants, that moved to USA.

Russia likely comes closer to the definition of empire then USA, just like USA, Russia is multi-ethnic/racial but unlike USA, most of these ethnic groups did not immigrate to Russia, but were conquered and assimilated during Russian expansions. Russia is actually a surprisingly homogeneous country, while Russia contain many minorities almost all ethnic groups are focused in their own little ethnic republics, where their own ancestral land used to be before they were conquered and made part of Russia.

You could slice Russia up today into probably 50 maybe a 100 small fairly ethnically homogeneous little countries, while the same could not be done in USA.

Ironically I believe there is a higher degree of separatists desire in USA then in Russia.

The USA is an empire. Period. If you don’t get your head around that basic fact, or see how it operates then you also must believe that you are a rich nation because you are an excellent, or ‘exceptional’ people. You can believe that if you wish, but as an Englishman with an ex empire, I warn you, the reality check lasts a looong while. We were rich be cause we stole resources at the point of a bayonet, refined the goods and sold them back to the world. You are rich because your government forces your currency down the throats of the world at the end of a gun. It is a different kind of theft, but theft it is.

To have an opinion poll on such topics requires a knowledgeable population which could even comprehend such a question. So polls on such topics are not currently possible.

The US is held together by the state monopoly on violence, indoctrination from birth, systemically induced ignorance, fear of the mob (majority) and finally, that enlightened self-interest, which is born in Americans when they succumb to the former, enumerated forces.

There is however a common memory in the south which will lead to separatist movements at the first opportunity and both Texas and California have multiple organizations which are pressing for separation and nationhood.

As for your claim of a “4 year prison term for separatists in Russia.”, at this point, that is just uncorroborated rubbish .

Occupy? And how many US military bases are there around the world? Not to mention US corporation and financial institutions, or the governments, land, and infrastructure controlled by the US.
As exploiting, that should be obvious to the casual observer.

When the USSR did that in Eastern Europe, which was practically enemy Nazi territory in the recent past, it was called ‘occupation’.
When the US (Anglo-Zionist Empire) does it it is called … … …crickets.
At least it is so in the mind of the ‘bad’ anonymous whose purpose here can only be that of a foil.

In the 15 years since 9/11 the USA has successfully:
1.destroyed the oil producers that wanted to trade oil in other than the dollar by bombing them into the stone age (Iraq Libya)
2. torn the heart out of the BRICS
3. taken over the governments of S America.
4. Crushed commodities and sunk South africa
5. Crushed emerging economies by ever strengthening the dollar as it did before in the late 90s
6. Spread military bases into 46 of 52 African nations.
7. Ringed the S periphery of Russia and China with long range missiles and drones.
8. Broken the growing relationship between Eu and Russia by a coup in Ukraine, placing mass military hardware into Eu, continually removing Eu strength with financial and political subterfuge, including Brexit, flooded it with US sponsored migrants
9. extended NATO right up to the Russian border, including Afghanistan and Kazakhstan
10. Made merry hell with Russian economic cooperation with the EU
11. Smashed Syria to pieces and illegally built more military bases inside the country than Russia has, all on oil fields
12. etc etc etc.
All of this during the US’s ‘pivot to Russia’. It’s successes were huge

Really? There is no denying that the USA did create chaos, destruction, wars, insurrections and crises all over the planet, but did that do to the USA? The party responsible for these policies has lost power, rulers of minor countries like the Philippines now openly insult the US President, the US armed forces can’t even take a rather small city like Mosul, the US is not ridiculed and despised all over the Middle-East, Israel and even the KSA are trying to court Russia, in the Ukraine the US-backed regime is hated and failing, the sanctions did more damage to the US fracking industry than to Russia, and their most hated enemy – Putin – is not only as the most powerful man on earth, but has a massive support of the Russian people.

You call that a success? Then I wonder why would qualify as “failure” in your book…

You mention the dollar. It used to be back by gold. Then it became backed by oil. Then by a combo of oil and US aircraft carriers. Now it is mostly backed by inertia and delusion, nothing else. As for Russia and China, they are dealing in Yuans and Roubles.

As for Aleppo, please don’t dismiss it. Not only is that huge military victory (Aleppo was the REAL capital of Daesh, not tiny Raqqa), but it is also a political victory (Putin forced Erdogan to accept the loss of Aleppo and to help get the wahabi crazies out of there). Finally, and most importantly, in a war which is 80% informational, 15% economic and 5% kinetic, the loss of Aleppo is an “informational Stalingrad” for the USA.

You call me naive. You might want to reconsider your certitudes and look at the bigger forest behind the trees you mention ;-)

Saker, I agree with you and the article is excellent and as good as most of yours(but, please, proof-read your articles more carefully before publishing!) Proper gander(Propagandist?) is looking back, without admitting that the tide just changed. I´m sure that the game just only started and the future belongs to Eurasia. The best choice for Trump is to work hard and solve domestic problems of US first. Thus make America great again. And after that leave the rest of the world and stay on the other side of the ocean. US has already done enough harm for the world, during the last century. I said that because I believe that Trump was sincere when he said that “Americanism is not globalism”. He´s not a liberal and a globalist. Now he can prove it to us.

Problem with folks like proper gander is that they are SO realists and cynical and think that´s cool and wise and, most of all, intelligent. That´s why they never really see the trends. I remember loads of similar comments just after the Crisis of Ukraine: how Russias economy will sink in a year and how ruble is going to be worth of toilet paper, and how Russia will stuck to Syria, and how it destroys her economy, and how Russia has no chance to survive sanctions and low oil price etc. etc. Remember those comments? And what´s the reality now? Sanctions are destroying EU and are blessing in disguise for Russia. Syria is a HUGE political victory for Russia and because of that, Turkey is possibly leaving NATO in the future and joining to SCO! And, who would believe in 2014 Brexit or Trumps presidency? Those proper ganders laughed that time in their great “objective” knowledge, and thought that nothing will never change because they think(fear?) that West(NWO) is almighty, and no-one can oppose it successfully. But they didn´t see what´s coming. And they will never see that. God bless you Saker, and keep up the good work.

That is the start of a long conversation that I would love to have some time, Mr Saker. I am not a very quick typist, so perhaps not here.

Russia is winning hearts and minds, but the US is winning the ground, there is no doubt about it. Obamas stint was awesome, if you like death and the annihilation of competition is your objective. I am convinced the Philippines, S Korea, Spratleys and Taiwan are shortly going to become for China what Crimea, Georgia, Syria and Ukraine, etc have been for Russia. Trump is the pivot to Asia and he may well convince the world that the US must be stopped at all costs. He is the natural heir of Obama. Clinton wanted to carry on at the ME and Russia, but really, their job is done between the Euphrates and Lisbon. China next.

Your elites are only having a public spat because a whole new tranche of billionaire buddies are ascending to the seats of power and whole bunch of others have just lost their money and their chairs. No more, in my view. The show goes on.

And I don’t underestimate Aleppo. We lost our crown jewel, India (the east india company had a turnover greater than the whole British Isles at one point) because once the faintest whiff of freedom entered the nostrils of the Indians via mahatma Gandhi, no amount of shooting of protesters could rid them of the desire for more. Aleppo has that potential.

Hmmm, the one avian says that the tide has turned, the other avian says that a single swallow doesn’t make a summer. Both avians are actually correct, guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens in 2017, 2018, 2019, etc :-)

Yes, Russia is winning hearts and minds, more and more. But is US winning the ground? Really? In Philippines and in ME??? To me it seems that US is losing the ground. And what happens in EU? It looks like US is going to lose ground also in EU. Strongest allies of US are now only Scandinavia, UK and those Russophobes in Poland and Baltics. It´s unclear what happens to the rest of EU, especially in the case of Le Pens presidency. Germany is a a strong economy and the most powerful country in EU. Germany has been under the occupation of US after the WW2, but that´s something that´s not written in stone. Germany is crucial in geo-politics of Europe and if they decide to change the course, what can US do? Start the war? I think that the war is the only solution left, if US wants to maintain the hegemony.

US is not the Empire. The influence of US is based on dollar and in reality US is like the house of cards. If monetary system collapses, US is done.

I think that Trump is exactly the opposite of Obama, far from being natural heir of him(what a strange claim). He CAN save US. But only if he abandons the destructive politics of Obama and neo-cons.

Smell the coffee. American imperialism is expanding extraordinarily quickly and effectively.

The US objective in the ME was exactly what we see – a developmental set-back that will have them out of the picture and under the thumb for 50 years.

The US objective in the EU – a major economic and currency rival – (remember that the head of Total oil, france Iraq and libya wanted to sell oil in Euros. All dead) is continual banking and Euro frailty and doubt.

Turkey leaving NATO? Did you not notice that the UK is in the process of brokering a deal that makes the Greek Cypriots disband their army and hand over control of all Cyprus to Turkey. Turkey are bought and paid for. And how did the Neocons make Cyprus hand over their country? Go back to 2012(?) and the seizing of the populations bank assets, plus the hand over of Greek state assets -railways, ports, islands, infrastructure – to banks in dept repayments. The US banking elite own the Cypriot and the Greeks sorry butts.

The Neocons are ripping the heart of the competition everywhere you look.

American’s in general in in for a very rude awakening and hard reality, especially on Trump. Obama promised “close Gitmo; equality; peace” and so the african americans gave him the presidency. Did he do any of these things?
Trump used the same game to get the disenfranchised Americans in general to vote for him. Not one appointment looks like supporting his electioneering.

America is an empire that looks more and more like Germany late 1930’s every day. And like Germany, who truly thought the world could do with more of what it was offering, you will realise too late that your ‘world policeman’ role is in fact the whole planet fighting you.

I used to be a fan of the US, and I like American’s as a whole. Good people. But so long as its people support its empire by their ignorance, as the Germans did, as sure as eggs is eggs, my sons are going to end up shooting at your sons.
That
Must
Not
Happen.

America is deeply sick. It has gone the way of every drug addict – derelict and needing to break into homes and steal in order to support the habit. Trump has a billion denominated in dollars. He isn’t pulling a plug on anything.

It seems you are missing quite a bit. The more something grows, the more difficult to control and manage, and that is the problem that is happening within the Us, the more they attempt to expand the more control they will lose and the more problems they will have, this is historical, it has happened to every empire, the US is no different, not by a long shot, thinking it is is at the very least naive.

The Golden Age of the USA has already passed, now we are looking at the decline, and like every empire in decline it seeks to expand a s a solution for it’s failures, and the more problems it will have, which will contribute to it’s downfall.

The USA is suffering and that is plainly visible, it is happening in every area of the USA, without exception, the corruption is unsustainable which is also one of the many symptoms of an empire in decline.

I agree on this which is a symptom of the current failings of the USA “America is deeply sick. It has gone the way of every drug addict – derelict and needing to break into homes and steal in order to support the habit.” and no sickly organism can survive for long, and now a days empires las t much less that is also a recurring theme in history, empires used to last a lot longer, now they do not, and the USA is in about that time, there is really not much left, not even a couple of generations left.

You also still hold to the belief that the US is in full control of the ME and East Asia, and that is just laughable, it is also laughable thinking that the current international economic system put in place by the US has long life, it has not, SWIFT is going down faster than I thought, when I buy thing from India and China they ask me if I want to pay in Rubbles with a DIRECT exchange rate, from the MXP, EUR, and USD. It is just a matter of time and very short in fact, and when the SU loses it’s monopoly it will also lose any chance it has to sustain it’s economy, once that happens it will be a matter of weeks not even months.

The best part about all of this is that people in power as well as many others still think the US has long to live, and not only that, but it is unstoppable, which is also a symptom of a failing empire, it is also the very thing that makes the downfall quicker harder and faster, because you will not be able to see your failings and solve the issues, you will continue to contribute to your failings, making the snowball so much bigger and faster.

Both The Saker and Proper Gander made some great points. I would just add:
The longer your empire is in over reach the inefficiencies and instability rise exponentially. For example, social cohesion is at a tipping point in the US but it is ironically a dialectic (left vs. right) not a war vs. no war. Hillary et al. were poised to introduce a oil-less world economy, paid in carbon credits (wonder what they would have been dominated in?) and folded into a global super state. This approach was defeated (I assume in some masonic lodge somewhere) by the dialectic approach of nationalism vs. globalism, with a brutal ripe tide about to sweep China and third world economies as global corporations return jobs to the US and the EU. Sort of a brilliant move if you ask me… and another leg in the hybrid war to destabilize select countries short of war. Russia will be muzzled via Rex Tillerson and a 600$ billion dollar Exxon-Russian deal to drill for oil in the arctic. Wonder what the denomination will be?

I think the US had two dragons to slay: stopping the Eurasian silk road, which was scalped with the downfall of Ukraine (how will the road get to western Europe?) and to deny Russia the ability to sell gas to Europe, which so far has failed (ala Syria).

The Saker likes to dance in tropes about failed US military supremacy. I would say that Russia has achieved major advances in some fields but it’s absurd to claim they have the outright best military. The only hope Russia has is getting a few MIRVs in through the now basically global missile defense shield (keep in mind – the shield is more than anti-ballistic missiles – it’s lasers on basically every platform, it’s jamming, it’s space-based weapons).

I know that’s a bit of a ramble but no one really has the answer and nor can we influence the outcome, really. Go have a whiskey and think about a good looking woman or man…

Well, you seems miss on a lot of news. Ukraine is eager to get on Silk Road. There has being trains to and from Ukraine. Only thing they do not want to do is go through Russia, and they do not have to. Just google the internet, plenty of info on this…

China and the 3rd world will do just fine without US. Global trading is not the problem, the problem is the old way of demanding resource on the cheap at gunpoint while the world is rapidly running out of country it can intimidate. Good luck with America doing a job anyone can do and get paid the way it feel entitled. I am sure the 3rd world will lost sleep on it.

I don’t now recall who said it, but the proposition that ‘no imperium has survived a combination of internal unrest and external foreign wars’ seems appropriate here
with particular reference to the US. It seems too that both The Saker and proper gander have valid points and that the reality lies somewhere in between. At the time of writing there has been widespread comment here in the UK media, that Russia, via the imaginary hacking, has undermined and weakened the US, whereas the facts on the ground seem to show that the US’s woes are entirely self-inflicted. The 2015 edition of Yanis Varoufakis “The Global Minotaur” is quite the best account that I have read of how US Wall St capitalism brought the world to it’s knees in 2008 and why at the same time it irreparably damaged the US itself. Trump is merely a symbol of the widespread chaos now loose within the US and whether he serves as POTUS or is assasinated is neither here nor there. The US is still enormously powerful yet mortally wounded; what must be of concern is that it may take the rest of us down in it’s death throes.

Many years from now, Obama has died, but is allowed to make a short visit to the US to see how it’s doing.
He goes into a bar, orders a beer, and asks what the situation is. They tell him that the economy is wonderful, everyone who want’s a job has one, production is great and there is enough of everything, all the major diseases have cures, and the whole world is at peace.
“That’s great”, say Obama. “What do I owe you for the beer??
Barkeeper says, “One ruble”.

Seems more that you need to wake the F* up man, from your nightmare. Things are not as bad as you seem to want to believe, There is no ultra-conspiracy where every single American are the same and no matter what any American says or does he or she is still a servant of globalism.

Honestly I feel sorry for you man, seems nothing that ever happens is good and everything can only range from bad to worse.

This is what happened in 2016, globalism got its arm cut off, they poked their arm too deep and got it sliced straight off, right now they are running around and screeching and can scarcely believe it happened.

In 2016 globalism in all its forms including the rapacious take down of nation states, the positioning of troops everywhere and the escalation of serious conflict to a new plateau, grew at its fastest rate since before both the last two world wars. That’s what he is not so chilled about.

Against all their other gains, the win in Aleppo was less of an arm being cut off and more of a nail clipping. The US has left peaceful Syria on its knees and covered with US troops and bases, which was the objective.

Erskine Childers book ‘The riddle of the Sands’ was a novel written from first hand experience of a possible German fortification and militarization of the Baltic sea seaways and canals. He knew then that a major war was on the horizon between the England and Germany. Everyone connected did. Same now.

LOL,
listen buddy, globalism is nothing but a manifestation of Westerner’s greed…

– just like the Sacking of Rome (Western Roman Empire, 5th century AD)
– just like the many crusades (pillage of the Eastern Roman Empire)
– just like the Age of Colonization (Discovery of Americas and the poly-genocide*)
– just like slavery in the American colonies
– just like the US Civil War, US-Mexican War, …
– just like the Opium War
– just like WW1
– just like WW2 and Drang nach Osten
– just like the Cold War (fear of Communism and its fairer distribution of wealth)
– just like the Petro-dollar standard (thievery of the whole world using financial tools)
– just like the Dissolution of Communism (corporate takeover of the market of ex-Communist states)
– just like the war on Terror (upholding the Empire + theft of oil)
– just like the Arab spring (to keep the ‘barbarians’ disunited and down)
– just like any other war, putsch, assassination or color revolution in-between

So, buddy, if you think that stopping globalism will stop Westerner’s greed… you make me laugh.

One may say that a man is inteeligent (to some degree), but collective intelligence is a different animal. If the culture and system and communications is sane it can reach much better decisions than any individual, but in this society, hardly sane, it can be stupid and absurd beyond imagination, or mere stochastic system chaos.

The math of Bayesian analysis and Hari Seldon — the psychohistory of Asimov — is more applicable than that of Moriarity. Each individual tends to react according to perceptions of each state of the system, and the new choices and risk analysis, trying to perceive individual goals in a rational way as applied to a radically different rationality of the massively complex and chaotic system. By attempting to employ the same strategies, in the bonds of psychic inertia, in the new and different system state one falls further and further down the rabbit hole, failing to perceive, much less understand, what is happening, and becomes delusional in one’s denial of reality. Hence, the neocons and the deep state — and their failure.

Thanks.
Closest I saw was when Magickcat (RIP) waned to sit on the bed but the cats there left no room for him. He went to hall and made noise meaning ‘Wow! look look at big tender and juicy spider’. The other cats went out there to look and Magickat came back and sat on the bed — and smiled. There was no spider in the hall.

Day of the Living Trolls going on here. Once a Troll, always a Troll. But, there´s no such a thing than the “Westener”. It´s an illusion, created by MSM. And tell Trump and his supporters about the “team Obama-Trump.” The most amazing conspiracy theory I´ve ever heard.

Not thinking what you are thinking does not make someone else a troll. I have never seen a trollish comment on the Saker. Perspectives, yes. Many people have read and experienced things that I have not. I like that. Some people put their point more forcefully than others. That is not intimidating. The whole point of the web that scares the poop out of the establishment is the rapid sharing of knowledge and experience. Dig in.

Here’s the thing about the monsters. You ***cannot*** understand them or their plans by reading the ‘proper’ newspapers, or the useful idiots that write millions of words of ‘news’ columns in them each year- even if you ***think*** the writer matches your own worldview. So any analysis based on such considerations is bound to be incorrect in every significant way.

If the monsters are slipping, they simply change the rules. Hence 9/11.

Before WW1 and WW2, learned (yeah right) people wrote whole forests’ worth of current affairs analysis, 100% of which proved to be utterly ***wrong***. Even Hitler’s Mein Kampf, which clearly set out his intentions across the coming future, was totally ignored. WW1 and WW2 didn’t happen by accident, or according to the principles of any widely accepted pre or post ‘analysis. Though in both cases we can take it as fact that while the monsters got their wars, the outcomes were still random enough to give the monsters significant need for work afterwards.

We know the Monsters are not about to give up on Britain II (the USA). So Trump, sadly, is a dead man walking. It looks like they’re going for a standard ‘lone nut’ asassination play- with said ‘lone nut’ supposedly enraged by all the ‘terrible’ things ‘revealed’ about Trump since the election process first began. You see, whether you swallow the evil lies from the BBC and others, or not, you’ll swallow the idea that some idiot was influenced by such, and wanted Trump gone as a result.

With Trump gone, the remaining Repulican party that takes over after his death is more rabidly pro-war and anti-Russian than at any time in American history. And the Republicans have the absolute agreement of the Democrats. This means that the rise (and ***immediate*** fall of Trump) moves the monsters far closer to their desired goal of a Global Nuclear Conflict than ever they would have had with a Clinton victory.

The monsters are anti-life. It is their purpose to cleanse life from an otherwise non-sentient universe. They are the voice whispering “jump” when you stand at the edge of a cliff. And they are determined to ensure global suicide for the Human Race.

Is violence, torture, destruction and murder the obssession of the (stable) members of your family, friends or local community? Of course not. Yet you have been trained from birth to think this is normal behaviour for the politicians of any nation in the West where Blair and his fellow monsters have dominating control. And if you have difficulty “looking into the sun” and accepting the insane control the monsters have, think about 9/11 again. They did 9/11. Arranged the greatest false-flag in Human History. Mass murdered American people without a second thought- and had the absolute complaince of just about every organisation in the West after the fact- not just propaganda organisations like the BBC. Think about what that power represents. Look into the sun. And then try to hold back your screams.

‘Little’ people like to mock their ***masters*** with childish abuse. It makes them feel better about their lives. But it does ***not*** change the facts. 9/11 is the one fact you want to hold in your mind when thinking about Trump. What is the simple removal of Trump when compared to the 9/11 operation. One millionth of the effort. One millionth of the risk. And far, far, far, far more gain for the monsters.

Are we supposed to win cos right is on our side? Are we supposed to win cos we are 50%? We are 50% of the ‘little’ people, but less than 5% of the people with real power. And while the monsters don’t control a majority of powerful people directly either, that doesn’t matter, cos most powerful people support ‘the King’- whoever the ‘King’ happens to be- so the monsters only have to ensure they are the ‘Kingmakers’.

The BBC was boasting about the massive build up of Blair’s forces in Poland, and other new NATO neighbours of Russia have followed suit. Most of you don’t get this- but this is the classic WW1 play. War by ***inevitability***- ie., even when the desired war has no logical causes, act as if it does anyway, and build up foces in readiness for that war. Blair and his monsters have NATO ready and willing to launch attacks against Russia direct, even tho the consequence of such attacks would be immediately disasterous for NATO. And how? By putting the right kinds of ***dupes*** in command and control positions in NATO.

And as we face the end, the fool Putin shouts, ever louder “hey chaps, can’t we all just get along”- like a muscle bound trendy Vicar. ***No***, Putin, we ***cannot*** just get along with the monsters. They have a single purpose, our end. If you think their love of violence and the use of weapons of mass destruction is an ‘accident’ you are the blindest fool that ever lived.

Yesterday the BBC, in partnership with Buzzfeed (an MI6 operation) screamed its unthinkably sick anti-Trump abuse day-and-night (and was proud to use the word ‘unverified’ knowing it allows the evil scum at Snopes to give the BBC report a ‘clean’ bill of health) . I’ve lived through the second half of the cold war, and never seen anything like this. And the Cold War had the justification of post-WW2 tug-of-war over important nations in Central Europe. There is no such ‘tug-of-war’ today- the West already has more nations under its umbrella than it can handle. No, these are the ‘sirens’ alerting us of the immediate approach of ***hot war*** with Russia. As an admired Alpha, Putin has made the terrible mistake of never being willing to make even one strong principled stand in the face of the West’s bullying- choosing to ‘turn the other cheek’ each time. And this strategy now bets the whole pot on Trump staying alive and making a difference.

Forget the micro-analysis of the stuff happening in this irrelevant nation or that irrelevant nation. It now just boils down to whether Trump survives to form an anti-war partership with Russia- and who here is naive enough to think that will happen?

It is foolish to think Putin is a fool.
And there is much more going on than you mention here — forces at work you seem to be unaware of. Yes, it is an extremely dangerous time, but Trump is just the tip of an iceberg. Or, perhaps the cork on a pressured bottle.

Yes, blue – as soon as I saw that “Putin – fool” I stopped reading and discounted what had come before. Really, people, you have to make better arguments than this. Saker feels positive, and he has most carefully laid out three possible scenarios. It’s just as disingenuous to make such an observation as it is to be totally negative about Trump’s future actions – or I would say it is more so, since we have seen Putin in action so that’s not a prognostication, it’s a fact.

To be honest, twilight does have one irrefutable point of ‘quite considerable’ significance:

The monsters are anti-life.

Indeed, this is the crux of the matter here. Given the legacy of 500+ years of successful Western colonialism and imperialism, the monsters just have no other useful ‘guidance’. Perpetual enslavement, rape, pillage, conquest, and genocide across the planet won’t be dispensed with voluntarily — the mere thought of it is pure anathema to these dregs. Neoliberalism and neoconservatism are but the latest ideological manifestations of the Western plague raging for more than half a millennium.

As twilight also noted: 9/11 showed that not even the lives of self-styled Exceptionals and Indispensables matter that much to the Satanists. Makes me recall the proverb that the darkest cloud has a silver lining to it.

The underlying ideology of the NWO, aka The Five Eyes + Israel, aka The Anglo-Zionist Empire is
Talmudo-Satanism.

Zionism, secular Judaism, is the particularly clear example of Talmudo-Satanism.

The Talmud represents and animates the divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’, Jew and Gentile, Russian and American, or, put another way, it represents the denial and negation of Martin Buber’s “I and thou”. The Talmud is the enabling document of both the Jewish and Russian Christian Holocausts. Indeed it is the ‘enabling document; for all genocide and, ultimately for all transgressions against the ‘other’.

Satanism is simply the negation and hatred of all life. The goal of Satanism is the death of all creation. Because the mere control of ZOE is theologically insufficient. What Satan ‘controls’ is not of his making. This is, to him, an insufferable insult. For he rules at the pleasure of God.
He is a mere vassal.

Thank you for bearing with me on this. I am feeling my way through the argument but I feel that it may be productive. I hope others agree.

Franz, I agree that Talmudo-Satanism is a correct diagnosis of the Zionazis’ very grave mental illness in the form of overt, burning hatred of Humanity and civilization. I would just like to point out here that they are not born scum. Rather, that’s what they become thanks to a decaying society thriving on parasitic appropriation of wealth and the corporate-fascist misculture it spawns to legitimate itself.

Glad you see what I am getting at.
I also think that the infant, genital mutilation of males, creates a tribe of desperados.
After that indignity, they cannot afford to look back, but rather bond as mutants.
Much like the Neo-cons/Zionists have bonded, who have written the script now being followed by the Anglo-Zionist Empire.

“if Poroshenko is replaced by even more lunatic elements Russia might decide to recognize the independence of the Lugansk and Donetsk Republics which, in turn, would inevitably result in a referendum in these republics to join Russia. EU politicians will have a fit, ”

-But wouldn’t that be exactly what the Ukrainian leadership and the neocon handlers want? I mean, the Ukrainian elites doesn’t actually want Donbass back, if they did win in Donbas Kiev would have to pay to restore Donbass after 2 years of war, and they would have a ultra-hostile population voting against them inside of Ukraine, and the war-propaganda that has kept the Ukrainian population distracted from the government incompetence and corruption would be gone.

What the Ukrainian elites and the liberals and neocons wants is for the conflict either to go on forever, a constant wound on Russia side, and the conflict can be increased when anti-Russian propaganda is needed, or even better, the neocons total dream would be for the conflict to end the way you suggested, by an invasion/counter-attack by NAF/Russia taking more of Donbass and then joining Russia.

That would confirm all the Ukrainian anti-Russian propaganda about Russia gobbling up its neighbors. NATO media would be on 24/7 about this, more countries might join NATO, more sanctions would be issued(probably depends on Trump) it would be wonderful from a NATO propaganda aspect, and what would Ukraine lose? Donbas? Donbas is bombed out, and the population is hostile towards Kiev. A victory there would likely ruin Kiev.

Now without Donbass there would be no way to get Ukraine pro-Russian again, Donbass was the last pro-Russian fortress inside Ukraine after Crimea left. And post-Donbass Ukraine would be 100% in the grip of the russophobes. And the Ukrainian propaganda could continue as before “We will take back our homeland, fight off the Russian mongol-hun invader!! It may take 5 years, 15 years or 25 years, but one day our army will be strong enough!Slavivii ukrainiii” And so forth.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q108TnC-tOs

And what would Russia gain by Donbass joining her? Well, it would protect the people of Donbass from nazists, but beyond that, more sanctions, more anti-Russian propaganda, billions perhaps tens of billions would need to be spent to repair Donbass, the notion of ever getting Ukraine pro-Russian would be gone – Ukraine would become a Poland X 5 right on their border.

From what I know, Minsk 2 is the advantage Russia and NAF has, many thousands of NAF and Russian volunteers died to secure it. And any notion of an attack or counter-attack nullifies it and plays into the hands of the Ukrainian elites. Thought, it seems impossible Minsk 2 will ever be completed, because 75% of the Ukrainian Rada must support it for it to pass, so that seems impossible.

So it seems basically that the Minsk 2 agreement is just a tool to push Ukraine into a total collapse. Ukraine kinda fell into a trap when they said that “Russia is not fulfilling the Minsk 2 agreement” “Ukraine protect and support the Minsk 2 agreement”, because the Minsk 2 agreement is really terms of surrender by NAF on Kiev, and pretty brutal terms at that. So now by choosing their protect the way they did, “We defend minsk 2” they have shot themselves in the foot, because they are kinda forced to try to fulfill the agreement, even when they can’t and doing so is not in their interests, they should instead have said “The minsk 2 was a agreement forced on Ukraine by Russia, we have no obligation to follow it, it would undermine our sovereignty and the freedoms of our people.”

//Europe is in a state of total chaos. As I have written it many times, instead of the Ukraine becoming like Europe, it is Europe which became like the Ukraine: //

Calling EU for “Europe” is an EU propaganda trick that they invented and propagated through media. Naturally EU is not Europe, Europe is a continent that encompasses Ukraine and Russia as well as the countries that constitute EU.

It is a pretty annoying propaganda stunt, because it results in folly statements like “We Ukrainian wants to follow the path of Europe” when Ukraine is part of Europe and so is Russia. While they naturally mean on economic and political levels it still sound stupid because it is factually incorrect.

It is also annoying because Russia is more European then EU ,EU is actually anti-European. Anti-christian, anti-European history and culture. EU even opposes their own majority demographics and seek to change this with mass-immigration. Any European from 1950s and back would get shock if they saw what EU has done to their countries. EU would be better described as anti-Europe. Then Europe.

“From the later 20th century, ‘Europe’ has come to be widely used as a synonym for the European Union even though there are millions of people living on the European continent in non-EU states. The prefix pan implies that the identity applies throughout Europe, and especially in an EU context, and ‘pan-European’ is often contrasted with national identity.[56]”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Europe#Pan-European_identity

Great article very interesting! I have high hopes in Trump, and while I am not certain how much he will be able to do, he is certainly vastly superior to Hillary and her crew which would be guaranteed to be the worst people imaginable.

I don’t really see what all this Russia+China talk is about, Russia and China basically shared nothing, except a common threat posed by an aggressive NATO. They don’t share culture, demographics, language, history, religion and what is perhaps more important they don’t even share closeness of population centers, industry and economical infrastructure.

There is almost literally a world between Russia population centers and economic infrastructure and China’s population centers and industry. While Russia and China does share a border with each other, this is the the most un-populated and underdeveloped regions of both countries. I’ve seen some say that Russia will sell all their gas and oil to China and dump W.Europe, but that is nonsense, Russia couldn’t even sell her gas and oil to China instead of W.Europe even if she wanted to as transport cost would make that impossible.

And while I agree that Russia cannot dump China, that is only true as long as the W.Europe remains under the thumb of USA, the reason Russia cannot dump China is because that would leave her exposed to USA, who has shown it can get the EU leaders to do anything, even things that goes against their own interests, such as sanctions on Russia.

As for the part of Russia and China combine into a new state or whatever I don’t see any of that. Certainly they do not share institutions and there is no institutionalized hybridization between them. Quite the opposite is what makes China and Russia unique is that they are both very separate and strong countries that will guard their separate national interests.

What China is, is a stop-gap measure, until W.Europe gets some real leadership, at which point Putin will carry on with the real goal, which is not a hybridization with China, which doesn’t make much sense, but a hybridization with W.Europe, creating “Greater Europe”, a union that will stretch from Brussels to Vladivostok. This is also mind you, the worst scenario for USA, and what USA is actually afraid of, W.Europe and Russia uniting. Not China and Russia uniting and Russia dumping W.Europe.

For those saying that Russia wont dump China, I don’t think that is true. Russia has a history of dumping “friends” Russia support for bombing Libya for example, or Russia support for sanction on Iran, or even Russia refusal to sell S-300 missiles to Iran, in Iran’s hour of need, where million of Iranian citizens risked being killed if Russia did not honor her contract(already signed), now I am sure I will be attack by hurrah-patriots, but before that allow me to continue, I am not saying that Russia behavior is a negative thing.

A state’s function is to protect and improve the life’s of their citizens. That means that a functional state, such as Russia, does not have any friends. And it only makes mutual beneficial deals, and if the deals are no longer beneficial it reneges on them. This is not strange, this is how a government works and is suppose to work, its only loyalty is to its people.

And if one deal is better for the people then another, the government will just switch. And I believe Russia has shown she will do just that. All talk of “friendship” between states is nonsense. States does not have friends. And if they do, if they view allegiances to another state as more important than the welfare of their people, the state is corruption and non-functional.

Examples of this would be EU, that views its “friendship” to USA as more important then the welfare of their own people. And puts sanctions on Russia even thought it is against the interests of the peoples of EU. Those are corrupt governments, if they had functional governments, they would have switched to Russia side and ignore the sanctions.

Here we go, from Zerohedge: At the nomination hearings for General Mattis today, Trump’s candidate for Defense Minister, singled out Russia as the principal threat to the US

“Russia Is “Principal Threat” To US Security

While much of the hearing has so far been without controveries, in the most striking moment so far, Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Russia stands as the “principal threat” to the United States’s security. He said this is because of its actions and efforts to “intimidate” other countries.

Senator John McCain questioned Mattis to get his opinion on how much of a threat Russia represents. Mattis response was that “the world order is “under biggest attacks since WW2, from Russia, terrorist groups, and China’s actions in the South China Sea,”, agreeing with the neocon senator that Russia is trying to break up NATO.

“I’m all for engagement” with Russia, “but we also have to recognize the reality of what Russia is up to,” Mattis told Senator Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island).

Senator Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico) questioned if Mattis would stand up to generals, citing the Cuban missile crisis and bringing up the general’s moniker of ‘Mad Dog.’ “That nickname was given to me by the press,” Mattis said, adding his approach would be “Peace through strength” established by the first US president, George Washington – and often invoked by Trump.

Asked by Heinrich to list the principal threats to the US, Mattis said he “would start with Russia,” and continue with aggressive states and terrorist groups.

I am really shocked by how much you ask of these people.
They are not even in the whitehouse yet and the jackals and hyenas of ‘both parties’ (aka the New World Order Party) are already circling.
Show a modicum of patience before you go whining and wailing into the woods.
Better yet, do something.
“The greatest sin is cowardice” – M. Bulgakov, Master and Margarita

On a side note, regarding the various ROFL – LOL – FFS etc., I did make a depiction two years ago, as a reply to someone using the ROFL expression to prove? a point, asking him/her to imagine how it would actually look from an observers point of view. A bit embarrassing right??

Couldn’t find this one right now, but the LOL is being used (and misused) all over, so here is one that you definitely have not seen before, as it is not really public. (and no, it is not me).

Wouldn’t rather be the acknowledgment that Russia is not just a ‘gas station with nukes’ that US can sweep the floor with and push in the corner with impunity?
That is the sense I would give to Mattis’ declaration: “I’m all for engagement” with Russia, “but we also have to recognize the reality of what Russia is up to,” Mattis told Senator Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island).

The confirmation hearings have Trump’s team signaling everything the Zionist and Neocons
Want to hear.
Iran is mentioned as well.
The John Batchelor show is Zionist Neocon radio.
Since the hearings. …the Radio show has been tossing the label of Putin the Bully.
But doubling down on Iran…the sponsor of terrorism.

Guest liars on the show all labelled Iran as a …Trump must act to stop…. mantra.
The ripping up of the Obama Iran deal appears priority with the Jewish Fiddlers

The truth is, there is no threat to USA in the world. USA is probably one of the most safe countries that has ever existed. The only threat to USA is nukes, and USA would need to get its nose deep deep deep into others business before they start to be exposed to a nuclear attack.

Those statements from Mad dog is sadly no surprise, it looks like Trump already early on has problem creating a common foreign policy. Trump has repeatedly stated that ISIS and Islamic terrorism is the main threat to USA, but now his own crew is going against him.

How much deeper in ‘other people’s business’ do you think the US has to be?
It appears to me that the US is begging someone for a nuclear strike, in the face.
Wolfowitz has clearly convinced the pedophiles of the Deep State and their acolytes that a nuclear war would remove all records, laws and social restraints and result in a grand, thousand year breed-a-thon in the fallout shelters, where they would sire a master race . – a Fifth Reich following this short-lived Fourth one.

Hah, a nuclear strike in the face. Obviously if the states USA attacks had nukes, that would have happened. There is no better argument for getting nukes for small states then having a look at USA’s recent history.

Here is an very scary quotes by Mattis, apparently he has said that Russia wants to surrounding itself with unstable states.

Nobody on earth wants their country to be surrounded by instability, all countries wants to be surrounded by friends at best or neutrals by worse and want their enemies to be surrounded by unstable states at best and enemies at worse. Anyone making the statement that Russia wants to surround itself with unstable states is either a complete moron or a very dangerous psychopathic lier.

“No country on earth wants their country to be surrounded by instability, all countries want to be surrounded by friends at best or neutrals by worse and want their enemies to be surrounded by unstable states at best and enemies at worse.”

“The truth is, there is no threat to USA in the world. USA is probably one of the most safe countries that has ever existed”

Corollary question: Why then wage endless wars against an ever greater global majority and drown the country in unsustainable debt by doing so? And in terms of internal — domestic — safety, the verdict resonates accordingly: The US is one of the most psychotically violent countries that have ever existed. The USSR, by contrast, was very safe.

The offal which rules the US while brutally oppressing much of the world knows they are parasites and have assessed the threats quite appropriately to their global misrule.

i agree with the US statemment but are you not forgetting the gulags
and the cheka?
it would seem the same ”types” were and have wormed their way into
power in both cases.
lots of countries have thrown them out in history.
could happen again hopefully.

“Gulag” this, “Cheka” that. The incarceration rates prevalent in today’s US dwarf what the USSR ever saw; yet nobody seems to be particularly outraged. Moreover, quite a few contributors here resort to the supposedly ‘witty’ acronym of “USSA”, right in accordance with the Zionazi ideological dogma and perceptions regarding the Soviet Union. Beg to differ here. The USSR never raped, nuked, or enslaved anybody. Putin is dead right about the demise of the USSR being the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. He is hated by the Zionazis for very obvious reasons.

So what? From the General’s point of view Russia IS the largest military threat to the USA. Russia possesses the means to destroy the USA completely. Were this military man not to be aware of that fact and admit to it, then he’d be beyond incompetent. Also, it must not be forgotten that he is being interviewed by denizens of government who are not altogether in favour of him or his boss- potentially hostile in fact. So he is playing to the bleachers. What is interesting to hear from him is that he is in favour of engagement. He did not need to state that point in that venue. It’s a tell.

It will be interesting to see what does transpire. At this stage “it is too early to tell.” I think The Saker is correct with his analysis across a range of scenarios (my preference of for the Trump Strong one, as it leads to peace, the generation of enormous quantities of trade and hence wealth, along with a much higher standard of living). It is the right approach to take when there is so much uncertainty.

Another point to think about is where The Saker focuses on the shortcomings of making specific predictions. Indeed this is an extremely important lesson and all too easy to ignore. His lesson here does demand a better consideration than a willful ignorance of it.

Technically, in military terms, Russia is the number one threat because no other nation has the capability to be an existential threat. China has nukes and is dangerous and could the US great damage, and other nations have nukes too, but Russia could destroy the US in under 30 minutes, with no way to stop it. Russia would not do that, of course, unless in self-defense, but it is the only nation which could.

A greater threat would be an asteroid, which might destroy the Earth, although the military at this point could do nothing to stop it, so there is no point in evaluating or planning for that threat yet, until we have some capability of deflecting it (which is being worked on). A runaway deadly disease might also be a greater threat, but this is more of a side issue for the military’s normal consideration — although some planning is done. Similarly, the great threat to the US we have been facing for a while is the destruction of the constitution which defines the US (which is pretty much gone now), or even a massive economic crash that could make the Great Depression look like a minor dip, destroying the US economically.

Terrorism is a ‘greater’ threat only in the likelihood of terrorists attacking, but nowhere near to Russia in terms of the damage it could do.
The greatest threat is actually climate disruption, which would cause both extensive damage and is very likely, although not tomorrow.

But ask a military man what the threat is and he will answer in terms of military strength, which are nails which go with his hammer — and especially expect that answer to a senate confirmation hearing.

I pretty much agree with your analysis with the exception of the climate.

Disruption of the climate is about as likely as the Earth being hit by an asteroid. It is the same sort of threat- infinitesimal chance of occurring but as destructive as a motivated imagination may happen to arbitrarily conjure up (in other words, it’s a fantasy scenario). Trouble is people have been told about climate “threats” for so long that they are conditioned to believe that there is indeed a real looming climate threat presently. Further, the threat is supposed to be man made. Too much imaginings and not enough rationality, science and logic unfortunately. The climate belief is about as rational as being a Scientologist or a Moonie.

Meanwhile, back at the Senate Confirmation Hearing, the Trump nominees have to thread the needle and satisfy the committee. It is all about show. Yes, it is dishonest that a man can’t tell the entire unvarnished truth about who he is and what he actually thinks. It is dishonest that the questions are as banal as they are, revealing nothing much of value. Ah well, that’s the nature of government.

Climatic change is not a matter of belief, but rather a matter of data derived from precise measurements and can be observed by any fool who logs on to e.g. NASA’s photographic database showing glacier retreat, amongst other many and varied data. The greatest threat we all face is our own burgeoning populations in concert with a rapidly shrinking resource base. The proxy wars that the US has created are (Israel aside), predicated on securing for itself he lions share of what remains and that amounts to a lot less than most of us have been led to believe. China recognised this long ago, hence it’s acquisition around the world of viable agricultural land, something they’ve been engaged in for about 20 years. There is a finite amount of viable agricultural land and there is no technological fix capable of creating more; rather, one of the current problems is the widespread environmental degradation of already marginal biotopes, principally due to things like overgrazing and yes, climatic changes which are in progress, not in some disputed future, but right now.

The data has been manipulated in many ways, statistically, subtly, grossly, for honest reasons, for dishonest reasons, for political reasons, to make it fit better with theory, to “smooth” it, to “correct errors” and on the list goes. The entire mess reminds one of how in economics “precise data” is obtained after hedonic modification!

BTW, more fundamentally, try to get your hands on the raw as-measured data along with explanation of the means used, error bands, tolerances and the underlying assumptions. Know what? You can’t. Think on the significance of that a moment.

Meanwhile, take as an illustrative example of “precise data”, sea level. How is it measured? Where? How do you know the land isn’t subsiding or rising- making your measurements invalid? How do you know the sea level in that area isn’t changing due to a seasonal or long cycle fluctuation? The answer is, you don’t know. That’s the issue right there- absence of specific knowledge. Always keep in mind that absence of specific knowledge can’t be compensated for by data manipulations, sophistry and arbitrary rationalisations. All of that is pretense and dishonest pretense at that.

Same deal goes for glacial changes. They change. They always have done and always will. Do you know why? The answer is no. It is not known with certainty what long cycle they are responding to.

Look, some climatologists are warning that the climate is cooling and that the Earth is due a cold period, another ice age since we have been in an inter-glacial for an extended period of time. Some astronomers are warning that the Sun’s output is waning, hence cooling the Earth. Others point to a reduction of the polar icecaps on Mars and say, not so, the Sun is getting warmer, so too the Earth. Meanwhile we have geologists who are worried about the Great Southern Anomaly telling us that the Earth’s magnetic field is altering and allowing more energy, heat, charged particles, radiation and the like to get to the surface than before. There is a lack of specific knowledge. There is a lot of observation but not understanding. Pretending otherwise is dishonest.

The reality is none of this is some looming threat anyway. Doomsday from these sources is not upon us. The end is not neigh! Not from climate anyway. Change is an on-going process which continues. Long may it so do. Change- get with the program!

Now as to population. It is not a threat. Nor is a shrinking resource base. Those are other doomsday fantasies dreamed up by overheated imaginations. Accepting this sort of nonsense is like joining some mad cult, as indicated previously.

Gracious me! I still recall listening to “experts” being interviewed on the radio when I was a young boy. They said the world was about to enter a new ice age and that it would be here by the year 2000. All the islands of the Pacific would be uninhabitable they warned. And we’d all be so cold. I recall other “experts” explaining how we’d have overpopulated the islands by 2000. We’d all be so crowded the islands would be unlivable. Others said the pollution would wipe out all the fish. We’d all starve. Others said new killer disease would do the wiping out. I recall yet other “experts” telling us how resources were all running out. They quoted some mad hatter or other. Here we are 50 years later and none of it has occurred. None. Nothing of it whatsoever.

And there is still supposed to be “only” thirty years of oil supply left. I’ve been hearing about that “problem” for 50 years and my father says he was hearing of it for decades prior to that. So we are down to only 30 years until no more is left.

Yeah.

Right.

At this rate we’ll have run out sometime next century. Oh no!

Oh well. At least there is thorium. And coal. And gas. And all sorts of other stuff.

As for agricultural land. Two things. I, personally, have been involved in a project to take wasteland and bring it in as viable agricultural land. It worked. Took a while but there it is. Made good money on that one. If I was younger I’d go to Australia and do it again. Secondly, food is already being produced hydroponically in “factories”. Already one of the most successful suppliers of market tomatoes in Australasia works in this way. They do not require agricultural land to do it. The technology is changing all the time. It is being improved. One of the engineers I speak to on a semi-frequent basis insists that food will be grown in cities in tall buildings eventually. He sees it as inevitable since it will save so heavily on investment in logistics and it does not require pesticides. Change. Get with the program!

By the way, do you have any idea how huge the Earth is? Do you have any idea of how vast its riches and resources actually are? I doubt you really do have an understanding of it. For if you had any idea at all you’d not have accepted the ridiculous idea that “we are running out.” It’s so breathtakingly silly.

Population is a good thing. The more people, the more ideas, the more innovation. The more people, the more that can be done. The more people, the more there are to solve problems and rise to challenges. The more people, the more production, the more art, the more literature, the more music, the more civilisation. The more, the better or, as a fried of mine is want to saying, “Too much is barely enough.”

None of this is a doomsday threat. None of it. The real threat we face is government generated. Anything else is a trivial problem by comparison.

I guess the difference between us is that I’m a pessimist and you’re an optimist. To compare the hard sciences with a subject such as economics is utterly risible: economists are like historians in that they’re OK at telling us what has happened, rather than what is happening, much less what will happen in the future and the practitioners of both disciplines are swayed by their beliefs as much as by evidence. If you said that correlation is not the same as causation we’d also agree; there is also a case to be made that cooling in the northern hemisphere is not incompatible with a rise in global temperatures.

In case you think I’m totally in thrall to science, not so, and I would agree that whilst much knowledge/data/information is to hand, there is often a shortfall in understanding. This is entirely unsurprising given the multi-disciplinary interactions involved in climate research.

As an outdoorsman, angler, mountain walker, horticulturalist and amateur naturalist my concerns re population relate to the impact that humanity is having on the wider natural world and the rate at which species extinction is taking place, the consequences of which cannot be foreseen. If you think that this is not important I guess that’s your right. My perspective is that humanity is digging it’s own grave whilst having become virtually a plague vector for other lifeforms on the planet. Pollution and environmental degradation are what follows in the wake of uncontrolled population growth. One could argue that major historical events such as the eruption of Toba c. 72,000 years ago have had far greater impact and indeed it’s believed that humanity almost disappeared around this time. They also provide salutary lessons as to what happens when the atmosphere is subject to significant disturbance.

Your point re hydroponics is a fair one and if you’re happy for us to become inhabitants of a series of urban megalopolises fine, but I’m not and I feel sick when I consider what has been lost, in my backyard, in my lifetime, i.e. 75 years, and my surroundings are relatively rural.I’d accept that government is frequently bad for all our wellbeing, but I’d be interested in hearing how you think social cohesion could be maintained in it’s absence. Enlightened anarchy is fine in theory, but in practice? It’s never been tried, yet the the historical record is, let us say, somewhat dispiriting.

I’ve never doubted human ingenuity and our ability to overcome problems, however the problems we face in the foreseeable future are, unlike the past, mostly of our own devising and are of such manifold complexity that I would not even attempt an outline here. In short we keep shooting ourselves in the foot and telling ourselves “Hey it’s OK, we can deal with this”. It’s not OK and far from making a good fist of it, we are creating an utter shambles. The more of us there are, the worse it will get.

I do not think climate change is a hoax, I take the polar melting to be clear evidence of it, and the changes in species population, etc., to be valid, and I find the conclusions of the vast majority of scientists to be convincing.

I am experiencing rather strange, record breaking, weather patterns here, and know of it elsewhere in the US and around the world from reports and this augments what I hear from scientists. Man made or not — although the scientists say yes — it certainly seems to be very real, even if those with profit motives to deny it, such as the fossil fuel industry, have made great efforts to produce propaganda and pressure to the contrary.

I see no good reason to doubt the statistics or explanations that the climate has been disrupted and continues to change, nor to doubt that man, who has greatly changed the proportions of biomass and so forth, is likely the cause of it most of it.

“Technically, in military terms, Russia is the number one threat because no other nation has the capability to be an existential threat. China has nukes and is dangerous and could the US great damage, and other nations have nukes too, but Russia could destroy the US in under 30 minutes, with no way to stop it. Russia would not do that, of course, unless in self-defense, but it is the only nation which could. . .”

This is a really good point. It could even be seen as an opening towards ratcheting down the arms race for the future, something I believe would be very much appreciated by Putin, who has often pointed out that it has been the US that set aside treaties of the past, necessitating the current build up by Russia.

The point about needing to be confirmed in the post is also a good one – matters must be carefully phrased to accomplish the objective, which is for those who can implement Trump’s policies to be put into positions of power. You can bet this has been rehearsed most carefully so as not to be a false statement, nor to be an insult which Russia would not understand.

Good point, “a state’s function is to protect and improve the life’s of their citizens. That means that a functional state … does not have any friends. And it only makes mutual beneficial deals, and if the deals are no longer beneficial it reneges on them”. Russia only stepped in in Syria because if Syria fell Iran was next and then Russia possibly after that. And Syria was not even close to Russia at the start of the conflict, Assad was in bed with the French at that point. But yes, when at war, do whatever is necessary to disrupt the enemies plans and alliances, while strengthening and fortifying one’s own position (Sun Tzu-ish). And when is an independent state ever not at war?

As regards the EU governments, they are not really corrupt, the reason they cannot act in their citizens’ best interests and switch to the Russian side is because they are vassal states of the US. US army boots have been on EU grounds since WW2 telling them what to do and think. Yugoslavia had more freedom under the Soviet Union than any EU member state has now. Its just that the US does things in a much more suave manner than the Soviet Union could ever manage. Its the old “not what you do but how you do it”. The Soviets sent tanks into Czechoslovakia to control them, the US didn’t need tanks to control the situation in Greece recently now did they? Compliance was achieved by more subtle means.

The US is going downhill, and it has decided that it cannot take the risk of the EU ditching its vassal status and starting to think for itself because then the EU might co-operate with Russia, and then the US would go downhill quicker. Hence the EU has been given the order to commit seppuku / harakiri by bringing in all the Muslim “rapefuges”. In 10 years time Europe as we know it might not exist, so trade with Europe is a short term proposition, trade with the East is significantly longer term on the other hand. You don’t really have to like someone to conduct trade with them.

Hopefully Russia doesn’t try and save the EU, because that would now really be immoral, given what Russia let the US do in Yugoslavia, Libya, etc.

“As regards the EU governments, they are not really corrupt, the reason they cannot act in their citizens’ best interests and switch to the Russian side is because they are vassal states of the US.”

Actually, what we have been seeing is a bit more complicated, as the EU governments are vassal states of the EU government, singular – which is an entity unto itself that seems to be dominated by Germany. Now, one can argue that Germany is itself a vassal state of the US, getting into the weeds of financial dominance and all that.

I don’t think immorality enters into what Russia may try to do to save the EU. On the one hand, there’s Libya needing saving because its government was destroyed; on the other hand there’s the EU needing saving because it’s government is unaccountable to the states that make it up and has a policy towards them best seen in the way it overrode the wishes of the Greek people. Can Russia do anything about these tragedies? Maybe it can, just by staying out of them and letting them work out their problems for themselves. And if Trump follows this policy as well, all the more applause for his presidency. If he stays out, that allows Russia to do so as well. And that’s called statesmanship.

Anon, regarding your comments about Russia relation to others, here is what I see:

There is nothing wrong to be friendly with one’s neighbors, for Russia, that include its western neighbors.

I do not see anything wrong with Russian, European, and the rest Asia come together to live in peace and prosperity.

I do not see why Russia has to choose between the West and the East.

As for the past, we all had a troubled past, the difference is when we started to learn from the past. But we all learn and will learn.

I do not see China and Russia has nothing in common, I see it as China and Russia complement each other, and we do.

We have had good 2 years together, and we will make good next 20, 200 years as well, of course with hiccup here and there.

Of course there are friendship between states, and adhere to one’s principle as people. Two years ago, I asked Saker on what he think of China, he and a few others said China stay in her borders, do not meddle in other’s business, and want to help others. I am sure all those enable Russians not worry about her eastern borders other than US and he puppets.

We all have a past, and the past is water under bridge.
We all need to be friendly to others, too much calculated moves make one untrustworthy, and it usually very obvious.

So I share Saker’s optimism on China and Russian relation, and I think it is good for both country and our neighborhood..

“Hungary’s centre-right Fidesz government has been accused of undermining basic democratic norms and harking back to the country’s totalitarian past for launching an offensive against non-government organisations”

While the headline and sub-headline (bolded on BBC page) are traditional BBC/MI6 propaganda the content shows some signs of a shift towards balance. This is most unusual and I am wondering if a few cracks are showing with media?

Are regime changing NGOs really on the run or will they just operate below the surface for their minders?

What the term NGO omits to tell us is that the Non-Governmental Organization, while having no connection to the government of the Host Country, has very good connections to the Five Eyes + Israel.
They should really be called Non Local Government Organization (NLGO) or Foreign Government Organization (FGO). Or, frankly, just call them ‘The Enemy’.

That looks like a good news story to me. Declaring the assets of the leaders of the NGO Groups and having them registered as political groups controlled from abroad is sensible enough. It is similar to how politicians used to be required to declare conflicts of interest, place investments into blind trusts or sell them altogether, openly reveal their sources of financial support etc. Transparency like this is useful for the public interest. It is a principle which could be considered right through the political and governmental sectors.

They very often are. The important point to grasp is that NGOs are political organisations operating for the advantage of political interests, set up to use political means to attain objectives for those interests. Therefore there ought to be transparency. It is important to know who they are, what they are up to and what resources they have to deploy (as well as where those resources are supplied from). The justification for this is that NGOs often are in the business of minding other people’s business. That being the case the ledger is best balanced by letting those whose business is about to be interfered with know and understand who it is that wants to interfere as well as why they want to do it. This sort of transparency allows for an informed and appropriate response.

Dang! You wise old fools are gazing at all the wrong plots while the killer broth is brewing at the back burners!…it allways starts with the lizard queen,she may be down with the cold or stirring a witch brew?The witch doesn’t give a hood to Palestine but suddenly she finds a midges of love in her heart to give Palestine a hope through the UN.The second triad is the billionaire’s elect desire to move his emissary to Jerusalem of all places!,think about it…
Thanks to Israel’s premiere’s help.!The third triad is alquds forces of the mullahs forced to play along or sanctions sanctions sanctified.

So now we have the three abrahamic multitude fantasizing into the ‘END TIMES’ ,what we have is a big bang never mind evil putin he is eastern orthodox so he might not be invited?or kept at bay in the Baltics?as he has not be playing along with london,DC and Israel,

Israel just received the biggest arm donation that ever was,while the wahabbist dynasty paid for the same and are raising an army of islam captained by the retired Pakistan general for…hold your breath..”to defend islam and fight terrorism!”..apparently the mullahs will be invited though not confirmed yet,{as if they need to imagine that to defend alasqa mosque}

The threesome fanatics will war over a barren place of ground and there’s mountains and mountains of weaponry all in place,even the ‘head choppers’ who failed to burn the ‘barrel bomber’ of the leader is being brought back just in time.
Watch what happens in east Jerusalem and pray the religious fanatics in the three city states dont fall for this trickery.

Dear Saker, I follow your writings for years, and I have to say whenever I felt something is changing tomorrow morning you will describe it in perfect way and there would be no enigma anymore. It’s similar like when I see good chess player winning the game, I think ok I’l play better chess now by myself, I understand it better now, but then when I start to play I still play lousy :) Than master plays again and it all looked again so logical and easy. I felt same after reading this last article. I talk to people these days in similar believing, I remember when you were optimistic about Dombas in one period when everyone else were depressed, at the end you were right in predictions. So, I hope you will be again so close to truth like so many times in past. Simply you have this something as chess master :) Best regards to you Saker and thank you for all you are doing!

Saker, while your articles and analyses always impress me, I am extra-impressed with the combo of fluidity, comprehensiveness and structure packaged together in this one. That’s really impressive. :-)

I share your optimism. I’ve found myself already thinking about the next 500 years. And looking forward to the careful cataloguing of the past (at least) 200 years, including mentioning all kinds of unmentionable subjects. In other words, accepting ownership of the past, embracing it lovingly within the arms of “our history”, without getting stuck in guilt, fear or shame. I don’t know what will happen, but it does feel already like a new-found space has been won. And I find there is an incredible momentum, for me it’s to build towards the next 500 years, which isn’t diminishing, even with discouraging results in the immediate term.

Something has happened. And next, something will happen, at which point it will be undeniable that something had already happened, prior, to make way for this happening.

Good article,as usual, and intriguing comments– which is why I enjoy reading this blog, and donate what I can. I am aware of Engdahl’s take on Trump which another comment has linked to, and I think it has merit. Everything hinges, in my non-expert opinion on the condition of the US being “non- agreement-capable” This is something that will not be easily fixed. The only thing I can add is that the Trump phenomenon might be an episode of “carnivalization” or Saturnalia with an added element– as Trump himself has stated: “We are in uncharted territory.”

Things are getting surreal. I just watched some of Tucker Carlson on Fox. First, he interviewed Glenn Greenwald, who made sense (as he usually does.)

THEN, he interviewed Charles Krauthammer, who I find to be the most insightful commentator on Fox News. Well, GENERALLY SPEAKING.

However, Krauthammer blamed the Buzzfeed pee story on THE RUSSIANS, taking it as fiction of their devising. His ‘reasoning’ was along these lines: Europe is subject to a lot more propaganda than the US, and the Russian are world class propagandists. Got that?

Now, exactly WHY the Russians would want to create such tales, even back in August, when they’re doubtless hoping for a more reasonable American government to result from the current election cycle, is something Krauthammer doesn’t address. Apparently, the Russians are such bad boys, they just can’t help themselves, so there you have it!

I’ve previously noted that Krauthammer refers to Putin as a “dictator”, so I can’t say I’m totally shocked by his idiotic “argument”. However, the “Putin = dictator” meme has infected a lot of TV talking heads (including at Fox News), so Krauty wasn’t sticking out from the herd of ‘journalist’ mediocrities. His recent “Russians did it” theory, though, seems like it’s pushing the envelope. (Though I’ve been busy, so haven’t had time to check this.)

In any event, I think I see a general pattern, here. Viz.,

RUSKI DERANGEMENT SYNDROME > TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.

Trump is being attacked, but blaming such as attack as having Russian origin seems to be more about toxifying Russia than toxifying Trump. The calculus by the perps (I assume the US Deep State) is to make Russia so toxic in the American mind that Trump will recoil from a sane approach to cooperation with Russia, reflexively, as a means of destressing, even if he consciously thinks it’s ridiculous.

Frankly, I wish the Russian government was more proactive, creative and even vehement in shooting down the US propaganda.

Regarding “creative’, I just had a thought. Vladimir Putin (or a proxy) could tweet Trump once a day. Vlad could ask Trump such questions as,

“Please have Charles Krauthammer of Fox explain why he keeps calling me a dictator. Does he not know that we have a Constitution, Duma, and that i have to run for office?”

“Please ask the CIA why they think it’s such a grand idea to provide MANPADS to terrorists? If the terrorists shoot an American jetliner out of the sky, will they still insist that they’re clever?”

“Please ask President Obama why he didn’t bomb the ISIS oil caravans before we did, since he’s supposedly against ISIS”

etc.

This might be an ultimate expression of political judo. Neither CNN nor Fox are going to give the Russians fair treatment, and most Americans probably never heard of RT, etc.

Ah, but everybody’s heard of Twitter, and Trump is quite the Twitter-communicator…..

I think proper gander did an excellent job making his case. No one should underestimate the ability of the US to wreak destruction globally. But then, Rome did a good job of building an empire as well.

It reminds me of a situation with some friends of mine who had been renting for many years. Out of the blue the owner decided to end their tenancy and rent the house to his daughter. Upon inspection, it turned out the reason my friends had allergic reactions that couldn’t be sourced was that there was rot under the siding and in the ceiling of the house. No one knew about it. And my friends had been prepared to buy that house.

Economic rot that has no fix

Rumor has it Rome actually progressively weakened to the point of collapse because of its pension system. When it stopped settling its citizen soldiers on the land that over time was concentrated in the hands of its oligarchy, it had to pay pensions in currency. Eventually, with debasement of the currency the army wound up auctioning off the emporership to the highest bidder. Martin Armstrong details that history here: What Destroyed Rome was its Unfunded Government Employee Pensions

The pension rot in the US and the developed world is staggering in its enormity: OECD countries facing $78 trillion in pension liabilities — Citi report This is the economic canary in the economic mine that quit singing some time ago. It is the real time indicator that industrial economies that don’t generate wealth anymore. (see: Deflation in the casino: central banks play their last chips to no avail

<Trump removed via surgical strike

Let’s examine the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution:

Section 4:

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departmentsor of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.[emphasis added]

Pay attention to the positions his cabinet nominees take. Danger Will Robinson!!

The geopolitical elders speak, but . . .

Brzezinski thinks the US should do it in the road with China: Brzezinski: America’s Global Influence Depends On Cooperation With China and thereby divide China from Russia and work out global hegemony with China.

Kissinger thinks the US should do it in the road with Russia: Primakov Lecture by Henry A. Kissinger at the Gorchakov Fund in Moscow and thereby divide Russia from China and work out global hegemony with Russia.

In not too far a reach analogically, if you can’t figure out who’s the patsy at the table, it’s you. I refer readers back to the Saker’s reference to Larchmonter 445’s Vineyard of the Saker White Paper: the China-Russia Double Helix

Finally, can the US MIL get its act together?

Future Foundry:
A New Strategic Approach to Military-Technical Advantage

12-14-16

Theory of Change

In June 2014, the Center for a New American Security released “Creative Disruption: Technology, Strategy and the Future of the Global Defense Industry.” The paper argued that the United States military risks losing its technological advantage if the Department of Defense and its industry partners do not adapt to widely recognized strategic, technological, and business trends.
Concerns over the United States’ military-technical superiority are not new, and criticisms of the Department of Defense’s acquisition system are long-standing. As Senator John McCain (R-AZ), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has noted, “Acquisition reform has been a perennial topic in defense circles for years.” Despite near-annual attempts to address acquisition problems since the Packard Commission in 1986 – including recent reform efforts, such as the Better Buying Power initiatives launched by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisitions, Technology, and Logistics (USD (AT&L)) and major Congressional reforms through 2016 and 2017 National Defense Authorization Acts (NDAA) – there have been relatively few improvements to the system’s outcomes. Clearly, this failure to change is not due to a lack of proposed solutions but is the consequence of inadequate political will and ineffective execution. Given broad acceptance among acquisition and industry professionals that the current system is flawed, endless recommendations for reforms, persistent bureaucratic intransigence, and a lack of meaningful change, how can the Department of Defense establish a reliable approach to generating and maintaining technological superiority in the 21st century?
. . .

The DoD must view military-technical challenges as a strategic issue requiring fundamental change. Defining military-technical superiority in terms of acquisition reform, process, procedures, and organizational structure – even though those are critical elements for success – undersells the importance of the challenge and may fail to drive action at the highest decisionmaking levels. Moving forward will demand sustained attention from the most senior leaders in the department, Congress, and industry, who must push change down into the middle levels of their bureaucracies while also enabling innovation to advance from the bottom up.
. . .

To execute such an ambitious strategy, the DoD must foster a high level of cooperation among DoD components, Congress, and its partners. The department must take the lead in creating the vision, strategy, systems, and incentives necessary for change, but it will require external support to implement and fully realize the benefits of a new strategy. If the DoD works in concert with its colleagues on the Hill, Congress will be able to remove political, legislative, and budgetary roadblocks. A joint effort between the DoD and defense industry will strengthen that market sector, allowing companies to plan for their futures in a way that is financially viable, shape their long-term planning and investment strategies, and make the case for change to their shareholders.

While a reframing of strategy is the optimal solution, there is no recent historical evidence to suggest it is likely. In the absence of effective DoD leadership, Congress likely will continue to act as a change agent, attempting to force reform through legislation as seen in the 2016 and draft 2017 NDAA bills. Such efforts will be better than no change at all, but Congress could better facilitate progress by dictating the outcomes it desires, rather than assigning specific solutions.
In the absence of effective change from either the executive or legislative branches of government, the defense industry must explore ways in which it can adapt independently. [emphasis added]

The US technological advantage edge is relatively simple to maintain: . . . the defense industry must explore ways in which it can adapt independently. How about a declaration of martial law?–as the Congress was threatened with back in 2008 over a matter of a few trillion here and there of banking losses–Bush threatened Congress with Martial Law!

My thought is that keeping this empire from going off the rails is not a no-brainer. I’m in substantial agreement with proper gander with most of his conclusion, except that business about SDRs, which amounts to more fiat toilet paper:

Why war? Because interest bearing debt requires an ever-expanding market in order for interest on past debt to be paid. If it fails to aggressively expand into virgin markets and populations (which Ru and China clearly intend to stop), it needs the fog of war to cover the quiet and massive deleveraging of banks and deflation of bubbles. That is why debt is not inherently, but always leads to evil.

Trump is no friend of anyone. He has just elbowed his family onto the top table. The war he is having with the media is just about getting it in line with his message and loosing off its old alliances

You will see China and Russia back to back against the militarized vampire that is dollar debt.
They will continue to prepare for war.
They will continue to attempt to extinguish the coming fire by trying to shove the world institutions towards a new international currency basket (the SDR).
The issuers of debt will continue winning until the game is complete or they are all dead.

You mention unfunded govt liabilities. These are not only in relation to government employees. They go far further. Unfunded government employee pensions, unfunded social security liabilities, unfunded medicare and medicaid liabilities and on the list goes. It is breathtaking.

Recent calculations show the unfunded liabilities the US government faces exceed US$ 222-trillion. It can’t be paid. So………….. default is a-coming. If you are in the USA, or Europe for that matter, do not be expecting to receive generous benefits you were led to expect. Default is what you can expect instead. But think on this. If you had paid no tax on your earnings and expenditure from the day you started your first job until the day you retired you’d have had double the discretionary spending power you experience presently. Instead of running a 40 year working career out of necessity, most people would have had the option of retiring or moving into lesser earning but more interesting pursuits after 20 years. Or a person could have a part time working arrangement, leaving the opportunity for study, travel, creativity, innovation and (the biggie) a full engagement with their own family. If inflation of the currency was not allowed and fractional reserve banking was treated as the crime of fraud that it is, your spending power over your lifetime would be even greater. This has an incredible effect on everyone in society and it is significantly to their detriment.

Anyway, in the end all lunches have to be paid for one way or another. In the case of the USA and Europe it is unlikely in the extreme that anything President-elect Trump does is going to avoid the inevitable default. The effects of this will be worldwide. China will be terribly injured by it. India also. Russia is in an interesting situation. What may occur there? As the man said, “too early to tell”.

Hi Saker, I was sad that you didn’t say anything about Africa. Since Afracom – however its spelt – came and plunked itself down in Africa, Boko Haram has existed – same exactly as ISIL in the MIddle East…its so sad.

Its organized crime. Those are the guys that are killing the rhinos and elephants and selling the ivory and horns to China. China has said by the end of 2017 that she will make the trade in this kill-product illegal, but without protecting those animals the black market will continue to thrive.

If Boko Haram was stopped, like ISIL, this would be such a help to dear Africa. I wish Russia could help Africa, but I suppose England is still there really as there are so many ex-pats there, although they feel that England deserted them when it got rid of its colonies…

Anyway, the CIA has created Boko Haram the same way it created ISIL with funding and training and arms…and Toyotas.

So sad for all of us to lose these wonderful animals. 97 elephants are being killed every day.

Many here will remember the US guided missile destroyer Donald Cook incident in the Black Sea circa 2014. A single Russian SU-24 with only an electronic weapon pod disabled the Cook’s weapon systems. Its quote “much-vaunted AEGIS system was entirely shut down rendering the Cook’s entire communication system useless, its radar based weapons jammed and its anti-air missile function disrupted”.
According to this article it is inferred that this was possible due to the Donald Cook’s copper wiring and that US ships are now being retro-fitted with fibre.
Is this true and does this mean that this Russian capability will be lost or is there more to this story? Any military analysts/experts care to comment?

In the article you linked, he is again war-mongeringer, suggesting Russia, and now also China should do silly things. Quote:

“With the US carrier task forces inoperative, this is a prime time for Russia to seize Ukraine and whatever else they are alleged to want, and it is a prime time for China to take Taiwan and Japan if they want it. There is no American Navy to deploy to stop them, and a nuclear threat from the clowns in Washington would mean nothing other than the complete destruction of the entire Western world, with the moronic idiots in Washington being the first to go. ”

Your heard it here first, PCR is either mentally challenged or a limited CIA-hangout. And that, by the way, would make the copper wiring seaman’s yarn he spins, disinformation.

Not controlled opposition I think, but internally conflicted with what he used to believe and support and what he is now observing and thinking as viewpoints change — which takes time and adjustment, and to acknowledge past errors, fitting it a new world view.

In terms of their pasts, no one is absolutely 100% pure and always knew The Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth.

It is unfortunate to discard the good that certain individuals are doing today, because of certain imperfections they had yesterday, particularly when yesterday is the 1980s and what counts is today.

_smr and Anonymous might consider being a bit less strident in their demands for ideological purity, and how far into the past those demands can realistically be demanded of people like Roberts. I find him still stubborn on errors of Reagonomics which he is still ego-attached to, but in terms of his clearheaded-ness on the Deep State, US imperial Foreign policy, the MSM presstitutes, etc most critics will be hard put to be able to say they are doing more good than PCR is doing.

“If this account is true, and I lack the technical expertise to judge what I have been told, we are presented with a test case of what we are told are Russian and Chinese aggressive intentions against the West. (The sentences that _smr quoted are here.)

That figures, but in fact he seems to represent one outlet of a faction, not cia – which is the faction presently in power. This faction, one may deduce, does not share a common delusional view of the world with the other faction.

They have a different delusional belief system. I believe it was spoken of to the Senate recently – something about “fissures in our tapestry”… Incredibly, they frankly said “tapestry”… Normally a political tapestry is a polite way of saying a curtain of lies…

However, all this means is a better understanding of the deductive reasoning his utterances provide…

He’s cute! Fun! And leaves soooo many clues.

He does not like my Regan story… seems the Ladies at Nancy’s tea party laughed at he idea that Ronnie might run for Governor… True story. I knew one of the Ladies… Pity, how the gods raise an idiot to the status of Hero…vast delusion

In an open war the carrier is a big fat target. It is going to require inordinate resources to defend against the numerous threats it faces. Even in the time of the USSR it was understood that a carrier task group was vulnerable to air to surface or surface to surface missile attack. A mass missile attack would be difficult to defend against- likely one or more missiles would succeed. Then your carrier is disabled, likely unable to receive, let alone launch aircraft. Even more of a problem are submarines. They can be difficult to detect indeed. It only takes one torpedo… We could also discuss cruise missiles and even unconventional attacks. Again, it only takes one success…

It is well published that in defense circles the carrier has been understood to be a bit of a liability for some time. They can’t go into a littoral combat zone as they are so vulnerable. So they have to stay out to sea. This increases the round trip distance their aircraft have to make, which increases fuel load and reduces payload. It also increases the time each sortie takes to complete. Think on this. A thirty minute gun strike by a 16″ inch gun battleship of WW2 vintage could put as much weight of ordinance on target as the entire air group of a supercarrier would take all day to do presently. The battleship, while having a shorter range of delivery can reasonably be expected to survive in the littoral (for a while). Even so, it is also a big target. Big targets, whether a battleship or a carrier are vulnerable to a well armed foe who knows what to do about them.

The trouble with these “super” ships is that they represent an enormous sunk cost resource. They take years to build. They have thousands of sailors aboard, many with extensive training and high end skills. This sort of resource demands further extravagant expenditure of resource to protect it for if it is lost, the blow is significant for many reasons- loss of capability, loss of prestige etc. What good the screen of protective ships once the carrier is disabled? Meanwhile the means to destroy them has only become more affordable and much more effective than previously. Big ships are a power projection device which works against foes who have not the means to deal with them. Those means exist now. Times have changed.

Years ago, the British had Empire and they had the military means to put down uprising and opposition. Even so, against a tiny yet determined foe in South Africa, Boer farmers, they could not prevail. They were only able to end that war by the use of concentration camps against civilians- a war crime. This was a huge warning only commented on by few observers. What it revealed was that the military of the Empire was designed to subjugate relatively weak enemies, internal enemies predominantly. Strong and capable ones would be a different matter entirely. What was foreshadowed was that against a well trained, well armed modern military things would be different. WW1 was to demonstrate this soon enough in the trenches. Today the carrier is in an analogous situation, but it would not require years of trench warfare to confirm its vulnerability….

The time of the awesome carrier is ended, even if the military romantics would prefer otherwise. Probably best to keep them in home waters. This of course leads to the correct solution for dealing with what is happening in other places, way off overseas. From the US perspective it is worth recalling what Washington said in his Farewell Address. He warned against alliances and foreign entanglements. Essentially he warned that the US ought to trade with all but stay out of their disputes. He warned Americans that unless they did this they’d sacrifice their morality and betray their religious doctrines. It is understood President-elect Trump is familiar with Washington’s Farewell Address. Will he abide by it?

I think you missed his point entirely.
His point is that if Russia is the number 1 enemy of the USA as US administration has recently declared then any Russian military strategist would capitalise on the present neutered state of the US carrier fleet. He is fully aware that won’t happen and that in itself is very meaningful.

He is not advocating Russia goes to war and the US war mongers and the Russians are fully aware that a first strike by Russia would never happen regardless of how temporarily weak the USA was.

Russia isn’t interested in WWIII, the USA isn’t either, except for some belligerent wacko types like McCain who have one foot in the grave, but it wishes hegemony and will have to overthrow Iran, Russia and China either fiscally or militarily -or both- in order to achieve that. They play a very dangerous game of brinkmanship. The MIC needs war at a level they can be safe with – a measured boil – but have no concept of the control needed to prevent boiling over.

PCR can be a little over the top at times and nobody has to agree with everything he says but he is worth reading.
I was hoping for some calm military technical analysis not binary blinkered headline depth emotion.
Disappointing.

On the other hand the carriers are not as key as people like to consider. It is analogous to what occurred during the lead up to WW2. There were several accepted military ideologies prevailing- received wisdom if you will. Examples include, the bombers will always get through, battleships are the most important weapon system on the ocean, the Maginot Line will hold the German Army back, the Polish Cavalry will ride right through the German Army all the way to Berlin and vanquish Germany forever, Japanese soldiers are short sighted and can’t shoot straight, Italian soldiers are all cowards and so on. The more thoughtful analysts and thinkers knew those ideas were incorrect. In general, their warnings were ignored. Several careers were destroyed when people stood their ground and refused to kowtow to the ignorance of senior authority.

Anyway, returning to our battleships. By the end of WW2 it was more than clear how vulnerable the battleship had become. Now the carrier suffers the identical fate. There are available means to counter them and these means are relatively low cost by comparison, yet extremely difficult to frustrate. Bringing the carriers back to the USA does not really alter things that much (except to take them further away from potential harm). It has to be suspected the Russian military planners are well aware of this (by the way, consider carefully that despite the opportunity the USSR navy did not embark on a super-carrier building spree- no super-carrier task forces for them, they had a somewhat different strategy in mind). You could say this confirms PCR’s arguments. Could be right. I don’t consider it matters that much either way.

BTW I read PCR from time to time and am usually impressed by his articles.

I was replying to Anon; point taken -carriers are extremely vulnerable to anything that either overwhelms or evades their defences. If their air defences or protective ‘convoys’ can’t keep an enemy at a safe distance then they are dead. Nuclear torpedoes and supersonc missiles with decoys come to mind.

Carriers are good for first strike attacks on ‘third World’ distant countries -imposing US hegemony when economic debt slavery fails or as prelude to it. Russia has no interest (at least at present) in world domination and has shown absolutely no signs of that desire. Russia’s defensive issues are typically more land based given its history of being invaded over its long borders.

I’d still like an answer/technical discussion on whether fibre wiring would be a game changer or whether this is basically hooey. Likewise the logistics of replacing miles of copper wire seems expensive and not someting that could happen overnight. Electrical power, as far as I know, needs a conductor not fibre optics.

Electrical power, as far as I know, needs a conductor not fibre optics.

Yes. The amount of any induced current from say a radar would be very small relative to what the power conductor normally carries.

Signal wiring carries small electrical signals. Signal wiring can either be small digital signals or analog. This type of wiring usually has a shield, which is grounded. Shielded wiring will take any stray induced currents (say from an external radar) and shunt them to ground.

Fiber optics carry signals digitally by pulsing the light. No stray currents can be induced into glass fiber by the presence of RF (radio frequency such as radar or EMP).

Maybe some of Russia’s RF (radar) is breaking through twisted pair wiring? Even so, twisted pair often has an outer grounded shield.

I find it hard to believe that America’s Navy has not comprehended EMP hardening. It is very doubtful that any radar can disturb an EMP hardened ship. Atmospheric detonations of Nukes create an EMP pulse.

That said, there seems to be something going on with Russia’s ability to interdict America’s command control and communications.

Of course, Russia doesn’t need carriers, the carriers are built for offensive purposes, Russian military doctrine is based on defense. Russia is a huge land mass, protected by other large land masses on south and west. The carriers cannot be efficiently used against Russia without being set themselves in a very vulnerable situation. Look at the map. In this context, Russia can be attacked only by land – the geography will not change – and that’s why I think (logically) that Russia is prepared by such an action. You can argue that there is the Northern Sea or the Baltic Sea, or even the Black Sea. You can also argue with the Pacific region of Russia but all are relatively easy to defend.So, there is no such as an invasion like Guadalcanal or even Normandy. Therefore the tanks and the available European meat, which is prepared by continuous propaganda. Let them come in, Ukraine has a memory of military cemeteries…

The Saker’s point of view taken together with proper gander’s counterpoint give us a good overview of the wide spectrum of data points we need to have in focus, to be able to apprehend the staggering insanity of the chaos-out-of-chaos Jackson Pollock painting we find ourselves in.

Talking of staggering insanity, it seems the UK is planning to start its own “investigation” into how Putin effected Brexit.
There is a statement on the Russian Embassy in the UK “on the talk of impending official anti-Russian witch hunt in Britain” (1/10/2017) – http://www.rusemb.org.uk/fnapr/5932

Some may see in the implications for grand strategy presented by the large scale blocking maneuver in Europe the suggestion that the primary strategic objective lies elsewhere… Some may even imagine that, just as they did before, the south Korean client state will attack and invade the northern state of Korea… Then, presumably, Comrade President would have zero options in Europe. Further, the blocking maneuver may become itself an attack, diversionary, but real…

Logically speaking the only option to solve many dangerous problems in the world is through military means. All that blabla will not solve them. The opposite camps are determined to have they ways.
China for instance is not going to back off from S.Chin Sea and U.S. neither so there is no modus vivendi there. My guts tell me that China will take over Taiwan this year and that will be a game changer.

“Regardless of what regime is in power in Washington DC, Americans are ignorant as they are arrogant, drunk on the imperial hubris of being the Exceptional Nation.”

Exactly. And the only way to change that is by a resounding military defeat right at home in the midst of fire and all-out physical destruction. The Red Army capturing Berlin stands out as the very template in this regard. Monumental and colossal triumph of Justice over evil, genocidal, militant Western parasites.

Do you not feel that the perpetrators were allowed to escape?
The Fourth Reich looks remarkable like the Third Reich did, though the Anglo-Zionist Empire which made Hitler possible is fully out of the closet this time.

Perhaps what Russia, and the Free World who will back them, need to plan for is an Etruscan or Carthaginian Solution for the West. Why should the people of the Earth be subjected to Anglo-Zionist evil ever again?

Absolutely. You nailed it. Read about the Weimar Republic and what the Khazar Orientals, with the help of Africans and Middle Easterners, were doing to German women… and men.

Read also about the nations which made up the Third Reich. Plenty of overlay there.
As I said before, the major change, the Scandinavian and European nations’ ‘resistance’ was a later fiction, is the active participation (with the fig-leaf of NATO) of the USA… and, of course, the Jews.

Nussiminen
“And the only way to change that is by a resounding military defeat right at home in the midst of fire and all-out physical destruction.” – that would take long words for you to explain how this will be possible in military-strategic terms. For Russia, there is Europe in the way, for China, there is Japan and Australia. Between are the oceans. It won’t be easy but possible, if the war will last some years.

“RT: Do you think this incident will be used against Russia later, despite what C-SPAN says? After all, we’ve previously seen how some high ranking US officials are making serious accusations despite a lack of evidence?

GG (George Galloway): Who knows. Perhaps our interviews are about to be invaded by the Disney Channel, by Peppa Pig, or one of the other heroes. I have very young children, so I am an expert on that channel. I think the surreal nature of this was best summed up in the press conference that Donald Trump gave the other day, relating to a fake dossier like the dossiers that were produced about Iraq before the war was written by a British intelligence agent…given to a British ambassador to Moscow, and he too has been outed; and then into the hands of the leader of the war party John McCain; then to the FBI; then to the CIA. Of course, all fell apart under the spotlight of any kind of forensics within hours of having been made public by the fake news channels – CNN and BuzzFeed.

So within a very fetid, febrile atmosphere now as the days are counting until a man who promised good relations with Russia and an end to the drive for sanctions and war against Russia is about to become the President of the US. They won’t give up trying to stop him, and if they can’t stop him, they are trying to put him in a corner. If that means blackmailing him with nonexistent tales of disreputable moral behavior in Moscow or anywhere else, they’ll be ready to do that. The blackmailers are them, not in Moscow.”

In order to have a deep and free interchange of ideas and to avoid ideological pureness here, I would like to introduce you another interesting forecast, much more realistic than the optimistic one made by the Saker, on what most probably will imply The Donald´s presidency for the citizens of the US, and, as always has been, additionally for the ctizens of the world.

So here are the risks ( well, no more risk but already most probable outcomes ) pointed out:

* The Coming of a 1% Economy and the 1% Politics That Goes With It.
* The Coming of Permanent War and an Ever More Militarized State and Society.
* The Rise of the National Security State.
* The Coming of the One-Party State.
* The Coming of the New Media Moment.

( Read in the link above to find each outcome development explanation )

“With its unexceptional billionaires, its dispensable generals, its less than great national security officials, its dreary politicians, and its media moguls in search of the passing buck, it’s likely to be a combustible country in ways that will seem increasingly familiar to so many elsewhere on this planet, and increasingly strange to the young Tom Engelhardt who still lives inside me.

It’s this America that will tumble into the debatably small but none-too-gentle hands of Donald Trump on January 20th.”

I haven’t read it yet, but Tom Englehardt is always worth reading. I will, however, hold onto the caveat that he does tend to favor Democratic Party ‘solutions’ to problems and is a far better critic of the opposition than he is of his own party failures. He talks a good game and it’s hard to disagree with him – but that’s the problem; they all talk a good game.

I went again to read Saker’s article, and I am impressed by its positive outlook. In the first comment, proper gander says, “This is a very naive article.” And you here say, “…another interesting forecast, much more realistic than the optimistic one made by the Saker, on what most probably will imply The Donald´s presidency for the citizens of the US, and, as always has been, additionally for the ctizens of the world.” So, it’s optimism vs. realism, according to the argument of both.

But what impresses me is that when it comes to the disarray of the US condition, Saker is normally not very optimistic. His optimism, I would say, extends mostly to Russia, where he sees positive outcomes for citizens (some admittedly far down the road) and a government which cares about its people.

The negative ‘realistic’ argument, I submit, is only going to be true if Trump does not learn from what Putin has done to protect himself from the dangers everyone sees, (including Saker), lie ahead. The people in the dark state (a term I prefer to ‘deep’) don’t ever give up – revelation is what happens when those dark rocks come to the surface as the tide’s going out, and boy is the tide going out!

Thing is, Saker’s analysis encompasses everything you and proper gander are saying. He’s not saying this will happen. He’s saying there is a possibility that it won’t. Who would have predicted what Putin has done when he first took over the leadership of Russia? Only Russians know how bleak the outlook was then. And now they know what has made the difference, not Putin alone, but the policies he has consistently in a measured way put forward to benefit his people and the world.

Now, that’s a survival tactic Trump will do well to emulate. It will even allow him to make a few mistakes here and there – Putin’s not perfect; no-one is. He’s made mistakes, even serious ones, but he always comes back to what is best for Russia, for the spirit of the people.

Perhaps you may find also interesting this article about “disinformation operations”, “deep/parallel state/government” and how it will be impossible to “drain the swamp” while the actual “denouncers” are really most probably the dirtiest part of the “swamp.

Well, sorry, Anonymous. I didn’t get past Tom’s first paragraph. He begins by confessing his ignorance about the phrase, “Know thyself,” having had to consult wikipedia for its origins. Well, Tom, I do wish you had realized that is the fundamental keystone of all philosophy since Plato, who tells us that Socrates had been sent to the oracle by his mentor and received this edict (wiser far than the one folk like to quote about “Abandon hope all ye that enter here” which comes from Dante’s Divine Comedy and is the motto affixed to the gates of the inferno.)

Tom is aghast at his own inner exceptionalism, fine. But he goes on to categorize the Trump administration thusly: Trumpian figures: Duterte, Orban, Erdogan, Putin (!). These, he says, govern “unexceptional, largely tinpot countries, or ones truly down on their luck.”

You should not be to hard on poor Tom. He admits that his “own triple helix of ignorance extending back to… well, my birth in a very different America 72 years ago”, when probably they never heard of Plato in the first place.

But what to say about such citadels of learning like the British Universities?:

“They Kant be serious! PC students demand white philosophers including Plato and Descartes be dropped from university syllabus:
*University of London college students have demanded figures like Kant and Plato be dropped because they are white
*Student union at School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) insists the majority of philosophers on the course should be from Africa or Asia
*Philosopher Sir Roger Scruton lambasted the demand saying it was ignorant

“They are titans of philosophy, without whose work an understanding of the subject is all but inconceivable.
But now students at a University of London college are demanding that such seminal figures as Plato, Descartes, Immanuel Kant and Bertrand Russell should be largely dropped from the curriculum simply because they are white.
These may be the names that underpin civilisation, yet the student union at the world-renowned School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) is insisting that when studying philosophy ‘the majority of philosophers on our courses’ should be from Africa and Asia”.

Hey, don’t you know that Plato was the father of ‘fascism’ and ‘totalitarianism’ and he did not like ‘democracy’? The “one who got the elites into their delusion that they deserve to be royals”? And when you think that Plato ‘influenced’ Christian thought you may understand why he deserves to be thrown in the ‘garbage bin of history’.

It seems that the insanity and cretinism takes new levels in the English society and somebody knows where to begin with: at school – at all levels, the cake being the Universities. Under the “multiculturalism” umbrella, the universal culture of philosophy is being thrown away as a “dangerous” knowledge. Beautiful prospects.

When the ‘insanity and cretinism’ of dumping Plato grips the Universities, guess who come to the rescue?:

“Since the “Conference on Foreign Philosophy” held in Wuhu in October 1978, the study of foreign philosophy in China has undergone a prosperous stage. This article discusses the significance of the study of foreign philosophy in the context of renovation, transformation and remolding of Chinese contemporary culture, explores the role of the discipline in the context of Chinese cultural construction, and anticipates the future of this discipline. A cross-cultural perspective is needed for a proper understanding of the significance of the learning and study of foreign philosophy in Chinese cultural construction; otherwise we might fall into cultural conservationism. Secondly, to make philosophy and social sciences prosperous is also a task for foreign philosophy studies, and whether or not foreign philosophy can be well studied should be a mark of the prosperousness of the construction of Chinese culture. Finally, philosophy is a product of human beings and should eventually serve human beings. Chinese culture should open itself up to the world and so should foreign philosophy studies in China.
@”On the study of foreign philosophy in Chinese cultural construction and its future”, by Wang Xiaochao,in Frontiers of Philosophy in China, Volume 1, Issue 2, pages 317 –

Or, more to the point:
“Plato Goes to China: Participles, Ontology, and Chinese Translations of the Euthyphro 10a-11b , by Jialin Li @https://classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/145/abstract/plato-goes-china-participles-ontology-and-chinese-translations-euthyphro#sthash.zmw9tqwz.dpuf
(The first translation of Plato by Zhang Shizhu and Zhang Dongsun in classical Chinese dates from 1932).

I wonder why on Earth yo uare derailing the topic of discussion by focusing in a tiny comment about Plato, when the nitty-gritty of Tom Engelhardt´s article was in his prospects for Trumps´presidency.
I wonder also why is this not deemed trolling-slide, since the topic is “Risk and opportunities of Trump´s presidency”.

The risks pointed out by Englehardt are those I have extracted from his article:

* The Coming of a 1% Economy and the 1% Politics That Goes With It.
* The Coming of Permanent War and an Ever More Militarized State and Society.
* The Rise of the National Security State.
* The Coming of the One-Party State.
* The Coming of the New Media Moment.

“With its unexceptional billionaires, its dispensable generals, its less than great national security officials, its dreary politicians, and its media moguls in search of the passing buck, it’s likely to be a combustible country in ways that will seem increasingly familiar to so many elsewhere on this planet, and increasingly strange to the young Tom Engelhardt who still lives inside me.”

Have you any comment on that, which is the important issue, and not the so much knowledge Engelhardt could have on Greek, or whatever philosophy?

From my point of view, when people is being fooled one time after another, even by the supposed “alt-media”, and pushed into global confrontation to galloping rythm, philosophy lays in a secondary place, or even lower, what really matters here is to keep oneself alive and out of slavery and looting.

There is no such thing as a ‘Ukie Nazi’. They are not members of the German National Socialist Party, and they do not behave like them.

Putin’s Russia has many similarities to German National Socialism. Germany in the 1930s faced the same Anglo-Zionist cabal that confronts Putin today, which, as always, wants to subjugate resource rich countries. Both 1930s Germany and modern Russia have responded in the same way. First to consolidate power under a strong, nationalist leader. Second to drive out international oligarchs. Third to focus the country on traditional values, self dependence, technical excellence and a strong military. Fourth to use that military to protect national lands that were unfairly removed. The Danzig crisis is similar to the modern Crimea crisis.

However, modern Russia is extremely fortunate. They are far larger in population, land area, and resources than 1930’s Germany. They can feed themselves. Putin was able to annex Crimea despite Anglo-Zionist fury. Germany was not so lucky with Danzig. Germany was pinched between the Anglo-Zionist empire on one side, and Stalin’s massive military machine on the other.

The same situation, more or less, has confronted many nations. The most recent of course are Syria, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Serbia, etc. Only Russia has prevailed (and Syria with their help).

“Germany in the 1930s faced the same Anglo-Zionist cabal that confronts Putin today, which, as always, wants to subjugate resource rich countries.”

Germany in the 1930’s was the Anglo-Zionist Cabal.

“There is no such thing as a ‘Ukie Nazi’. They are not members of the German National Socialist Party, and they do not behave like them.”

Really!? What would you call all the shades of Banderists then? As for behaviour, they are arguably far worse. The German NASDAP had some form of quasi-civilizational control. The Banderist Ukie Nazis are no more than a loosely knit band of marauders, rapists and genocidal psychopaths.

Perhaps you, being as close as you are to them, see ‘differences’ where there are none.

Hitler and his gang were actually a _creation_ of the Anglo-Zionist cabal.
A deception with the goal to first have Germany destroy Russia and then itself, presenting both Russia and Germany to the international dual citizen Khazar money masters on a silver tablet.

Worked quite well, except for Stalin delaying the takeover of Russia by half a centyry.

The Nazi ideology was not “germanic”.
It praised the anti-german Karl the Great and gave his name to an elite SS group, while not commemorating the true German Wiedukind, who fought against Karl the Great 1300 years ago.

Hitlers masters are the fathers of today’s Zionist-Nazi EU.
Same story with the “Nazis” in today’s Ukraine: They were financed and putsched to power by Khasarz. Nobody remembers Kolomoisky? Their ideology pretends to be ukrainian nationalistic, while in reality it is as anti-Ukrainian/anti-RUSsian, as Hitler’s Germany was anti-german.

A pity many folks still fall for Hitler, the Zionist planted trap.
Well, very impressive speeches indeed. But who wrote them? And compare Hitler’s words with his actions.

With those believing Zionist-agent planted anti-communist books hating the Soviet Union because they believe this anti-communism helps Russia or the Church it is similar.
They (rightfully) rant against Zionism all day long without noticing that they themselves are just re-acting to a Zionist planted hidden script.

Finally, someone can see through the smokescreen of the ‘neo-paganist’ pseudo-Germanic ‘ideology’ attributed to Hitler by the MI6 propaganda. Hitler indeed saw his Third Reich as a revival of the First Reich of Karl. He toned down the excesses of the ‘romantic’ “völkisch” nationalism of the pre-war ‘Germanism’ as well as the excessive anti-Christianism expressed in it. The order of the day was the ‘reconciliation of Karl with Widukind’ which culminated in his baptism. Widukind was viewed as the ‘progenitor’ of the Saxon dukes who founded the Ottonian imperial dynasty.

On 11 December 1941, four days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States declaration of war against the Japanese Empire, Germany declared war against the United States. On the same day, Hitler gave a speech. Search for yourself what he said.

This question is salient because PCR’s answers are at variance with Saker’s contention:

(Saker’s contention – quote: It is ironic, of course that Trump himself, and his entire entourage, come from these financial elites.)

Personal note: I’m mostly in alignment with PCR on this subject. Mnuchen is troubling as Treasury pick, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that all ex Goldman Sachs people are GS loyalists.

PCR’s comments:

Where are Trumps vulnerabilities? Answer: They are not in military security businesses. It is not part of the Oligarchy. The answer (Trumps vulnerabilities) are real estate and entertainment.

Who controls entertainment in the U.S.? The Jews.
Who controls New York real estate and the big banks? The Jews.

So, how many enemies can Trump afford to have? I (PCR) think this is just Trump keeping the Israeli lobby off his back. He already has CIA on his back. Does he want Mossad too?

At 24:54. I want to make this clear. Not every billionaire is an Oligarch. TRUMP IS CERTAINLY NOT PART OF THE RULING OLIGARCHY. If he was, why would they be trying to destroy him? You can’t have it both ways. You can’t be under fierce attack, and also be one of them.

….. PCR then has discussion on Oligarchs that were not against the people – who fought against offshoring of jobs. Not all Oligarchs are evil.

PCR then goes on to define Oligarchs who use finance to take rents, and turn economies into mono-cultures. This monoculture economy is what was done to the Russia by Harvard boys and their cousins, to then convert Russia to an extraction economy.

So PCR is making a case that Trump is not part of this Finance Oligarchy, which wants to rule the world through money power.

At 26 minutes in, the main point that is at odds with Saker’s contention:

The ones you have to be most concerned about are the ones who have organized the world through globalism to benefit their specific type of fortunes. Which is financial manipulation.
That is not what TRUMP does. (finance manipulators offshore jobs and turn foreign economies into mono-cultures.)

Most enjoyable piece in a long, long time… Agree with content… there is more hope than we have had in years… and yes there is a chance Trump ”heavy” could happen and we all rather need that… where ever we live and whatever citizenship we have. Thank you for writing it.

great piece, interesting conversation following (though the articile focuses on 20171, not 2001-2017)., I wished you developped more on the 3rd option, TRUMP down.
This one worries me most right now, so many bad signs in the news something is cooking up around inauguration day:
-TV+Hollywood calling for martial law
-unrest if not not full blown, nation wide riots
-all the mystery and contradicting info around the head of national gard.
-info that all FBI agents were recalled from holidays ect to ensure TRUMP securit amidst open CIA threats
-all carrriers docked home (P.C.R says for upagrade coppoer to optical fiber wirring or smthg) but still very unprotocolar and suspicious.

let him be inauguated and take office before criticizing. We’ll soon see, but can’t be worse than Killary or …. Pence :(

Article on RT today, which I did feel an urge to comment on, since I live there.

Under the radar for most people I would suggest, is that the stock-pile of ammunition – Tanks – Light infantry supporting vehicles -gasoline/Diesel – food – clothing, and ALL other equipment necessary to keep 13.000 Marines going for a month (War-Scenario). is stock-piled in deep and well protected mountain caves at the same location.

Most of the equipment was renewed in 2014.

Links, and video provided is in Norwegian, but google translate works pretty well here, for those interested.

Joe Biden has just gone to Ukraine, for the last time as US Viceroy. Anatoli Sharii conducted an interview with random passers by in Independence Square, Kiev to ask them what they thought it was about. There are very varied responses.

Saker, you underestimate the Iran issue. Kushner will make the policy on Iran. Iran will have to tolerate the state of Israel or they will be destroyed. You must also know that Trump is a personal friend of Netanyahu. The Trump family is married deeply into the ruling jewish NYC families(that’s where his real power comes from). Please watch his speech to AIPAC. One thing I’m sure of regarding his presidency is that he’ll deliver 100% on everything he said in that speech! The only other option would be your “Trump down” scenario, which takes us back to nuclear war with Russia..

Politics is violence; it is aggression; it is force. The history of Earth shows that wars and economic destruction emanates from intervention by politicians, leaders. Expecting resolution of evil by man’s efforts is futile. Satan was given control of Earth for a while and we know the results are devastating.

Aha…so the old Saker is back. I’d call this article “Saker Classic”. Rather acute and mostly agreeable with. The best parts:

“…the United States… now “own” that defeat.” ;

“… instead of the Ukraine becoming like Europe, it is Europe which became like the Ukraine…” ;

Some concerns are neocons and banksters in Trump’s team – from the degenerate beast Mattis to a selection of deranged neocons to the Goldman Sachs bloodsuckers and a few others of questionable positions , that can cause a disaster if let off the leash. Trump himself has made some rather disturbing statements on various subjects – from Russia to China to Israel, Iran etc. , making it appear that he might be only yet another frontman for the global judeo-masonic cabal ( that’s a more appropriate definition of what Saker calls AngloZionists ). And of course the neocon-infested Congress alone is enough to derail any good Trump might attempt.

“McCain referred to her as a “gas station masquerading as a country”” , to which I always juxtapose McCain’s degeneracy incubator of a country …oh, well, to each their own.

What’s also interestingly a few seem to be paying much attention to is the fact that the USA is being torn from inside by race , class, religious wars , albeit largely subsurface , to such an extent that it would not take much influence to cause these artificially suppressed by the ruling cabal forces to flare up into potentially nationwide inferno… not unlike a pebble tossed at a mountain slope setting off an avalanche.

Hi from Russia. The author renders pretty honest outlook on what’s going on in Ukraine, which is very rare in western mass media. But he is wrong somewhat about relationship future of Russia and the USA. Russia doesn’t trust the US politicians and it doesn’t matter who is the president of the USA, Russia will never be an ally of the USA. Unfortunately but this is a true fact. All what Trump says about Putin is perceived as lure and trap in Russia.

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